NLRB Wrongly Redid Worker Outburst Framework, 5th Cir. Says (1)

The National Labor Relations Board was wrong to reshape its framework for assessing offensive employee conduct in a case involving a Texas rubber manufacturer without first hearing from that company, a federal appeals court ruled.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday vacated and sent back the NLRB’s decision against Lion Elastomers LLC that overturned a Trump-era ruling and revived a trio of context-dependent standards for assessing whether an employee’s speech or actions lose federal labor law’s protection.

When Lion Elastomers appealed the board’s first ruling against it in 2020, the NLRB asked the court to ...