Top Labor Board Lawyer Calls for End of Trump-era Test for Rules

The National Labor Relations Board’s top lawyer asked the board to ditch its Trump-era legal test for workplace rules and employee handbooks and replace it with something based on its prior standard.

The legal framework from the NLRB’s 2017 ruling in Boeing is “more complicated, less predictable, and much less protective of employee rights” than the test from its 2004 decision in Lutheran Heritage Village-Livonia, according to General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo’s brief filed Monday.

“In sum, both the Boeing majority’s decision to overrule Lutheran Heritage and the framework it adopted in its stead are arbitrary,” Abruzzo’s brief said.

The ...