NLRB Declines Jurisdiction Over Faculty at Religious Colleges

The federal labor board ruled that it doesn’t have jurisdiction over faculty at nonprofit religious institutions of higher education.

The National Labor Relations Board’s decision Wednesday came in a case involving Bethany College, a Lutheran school in Lindsborg, Kan., and means that faculty at other similar colleges and universities will no longer be able to unionize. The decision also reinstates a more stringent test for deciding whether certain faculty members can unionize.

The board said it will overrule a 2014 legal precedent from a case known as Pacific Lutheran, in favor of a different standard from 2002. That standard, ...