Legal Attacks on Labor Board Mount as Texas Hospital Joins Fray

A Texas medical center is suing the National Labor Relations Board to stop its in-house litigation against the company, joining a growing number of employers challenging the constitutionality of the agency.

Protections safeguarding NLRB members and administrative law judges from removal violate the president’s power to fire subordinate officers as set forth in the US Constitution, Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, alleged in a complaint Thursday.

The labor agency’s structure also deprives the company of its right to a trial by jury, Ascension claimed, asking the US District Court for the District of Western Texas to halt unfair labor practice proceedings against it.

SpaceX and an Energy Transfer LP subsidiary won preliminary injunctions last month freezing unfair labor practice cases based on similar constitutional challenges to NLRB officials’ protections against removal. Legal observers have speculated that attacks on the agency’s authority likely won’t stop if more employers successfully halt the administrative litigation against them.

Ascension’s lawsuit—which names the NLRB, its four members, and the general counsel as defendants—stems from unfair labor practice charges filed by the National Nurses Union. NNU alleged that two of their organizing members were fired for their union activities and the NLRB issued a complaint in the case. Hearings before an administrative law judge are scheduled for October.

The company said in its lawsuit it will likely suffer “both economic and constitutional harms as a result of the damages sought and the very nature of the proceedings to which it may be subject.”

The NLRB regional director’s administrative complaint is seeking back pay and compensation for any “direct or foreseeable pecuniary harms and all reasonable consequential damages” resulting from the workers’ terminations.

Ascension argues in its injunction bid that these remedies can’t be levied against it without a jury trial, citing the US Supreme Court’s decision in Jarkesy v. SEC.

Ascension is represented by Munsch Hardt Kopf and Harr PC. Attorney information for the NLRB wasn’t immediately available.

The case is Ascension Seton v. NLRB, W.D. Tex., No. 6:24-cv-00485, complaint filed 9/19/24.