Starbucks, NLRB to Clash Again in Court With No End in Sight

Starbucks Corp. and the National Labor Relations Board are set to square off in federal appeals court arguments for the eighth time in the last 2 1/2 years, with even more cases on deck stemming from the coffee chain’s aggressive pushback against union organizing.

During oral argument Wednesday, Starbucks will try to convince the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to overturn an NLRB ruling that its dress code at its New York City Roastery Reserve café violated its workers’ labor law rights.

It’s the first of several disputes teed up for circuit court consideration, with the NLRB and Starbucks meeting again in early December to argue two cases at the Fifth Circuit, a conservative-dominated court that’s emerged as the coffee company’s preferred venue for challenging board rulings. Arguments have yet to be scheduled in five other pending appeals court cases, with four of them in the Fifth Circuit.

The unusually frequent court battles between Starbucks and the NLRB are a byproduct of the company’s resistance to a long-running nationwide labor organizing campaign.

Employees have elected Starbucks Workers United at approximately 650 stores over the past four years, although roughly 100 of those stores have closed, according to the union. Workers plan to go on strike Thursday in more than 25 cities to protest the lack of progress on reaching a contract with the company.

“There’s been just a huge number of individual stores with organizing drives,” said Jeffrey Hirsch, a labor law professor at the University of North Carolina and former NLRB appellate lawyer. “Everything is turbocharged because of the scope of the union campaign.”

The NLRB has won four argued cases, while Starbucks prevailed in one. Two of the decisions were mixed, but in each of those the court held that the board lacked the authority to order the company to pay for the downstream consequences of their labor law violations under its 2022 decision in Thryv, Inc.

Starbucks also convinced the US Supreme Court to reverse a Sixth Circuit decision in favor of the NLRB in a case involving a court order requiring the company to immediately rehire fired union supporters. The high court’s ruling increased the agency’s litigation burden when it goes directly to court to seek injunctions.

Dress Code Dispute

Wednesday’s argument will give the Second Circuit a chance to consider the NLRB’s framework for dress codes from its 2022 decision in Tesla, Inc. The board held that an employer’s restrictions on displaying union insignia are illegal unless it shows special circumstances that outweigh workers’ rights, and the prohibition is narrowly tailored.

While the Fifth Circuit rejected that standard, the NLRB continues to use it under the doctrine of nonacquiescence, which holds that only the Supreme Court can control how the board interprets the National Labor Relations Act.

The NLRB last year applied Tesla to rule that Starbucks illegally prohibited shirts with graphics on them, including union insignia. The board also found fault with the company banning workers from wearing more than one pin related to labor organizing or any advocating for personal, political, or religious issues.

The board faulted the single-pin policy despite the Second Circuit upholding that rule in 2012, which Starbucks first adopted as part of a 2006 settlement that resolved unfair labor practice allegations stemming from the Industrial Workers of the World’s challenge to the company’s dress code. The policy in the New York Roastery case wasn’t the same as the one from the earlier case, it said.

Starbucks argued in its brief that the NLRB was wrong to act like the Second Circuit’s 2012 decision didn’t exist, when it actually controls the outcome of the case. The one-pin policy in that earlier decision is basically the same as the one currently at issue, with the only difference being the newer policy permitted workers to wear Black Lives Matter pins, the company said.

The board, however, contended in its brief that the Second Circuit’s 2012 decision doesn’t decide the lawfulness of the single-pin policy because the company’s special circumstances permitting the infringement on workers’ rights were different. In the earlier case, the company said multiple buttons would distract from company-issued buttons, but it now says that “more than one union pin or button will interfere with the Roastery’s steampunk, hipster chic, ‘Willy Wonka’-type coffee experience,” according to the agency.

The Second Circuit granted the NLRB’s request to allow attorney Jared Cantor to argue remotely on Wednesday because of the government shutdown. Starbucks is represented by Williams & Connolly LLP and Littler Mendelson PC. Starbucks Workers United, which will appear as an intervenor, is represented by Cohen, Weiss and Simon LLP and James & Hoffman PC.

The case is Siren Retail Corp. d/b/a Starbucks Reserve Roastery v. NLRB, 2d Cir., No. 24-3168, oral argument scheduled 11/12/25.