A federal judge in Michigan rejected claims that the National Labor Relations Board’s structure is unconstitutional, stating that existing legal precedent blocks the arguments from a hospital operator. U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker, based in Grand Rapids, ruled that NLRB administrative judges and the board’s five members do not face improper protection from at-will removal by the president, referencing past cases involving similar federal agencies.
Jonker denied Trinity Health’s motion to dismiss an NLRB petition that sought to compel the hospital to negotiate with a union representing nurses and other workers. Trinity attempted to decertify the union after acquiring the hospital in 2022. In a separate decision, the judge granted the board’s petition and ordered Trinity to bargain while the underlying administrative case proceeds.
Appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, Jonker noted that the increasing challenges to the NLRB’s structure and powers are “both complicated and consequential,” yet not unprecedented. He stated, “The issues raised in [Trinity’s] motion have been squarely addressed by several court decisions” involving agencies with structures similar to the NLRB, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Neither an NLRB spokeswoman nor lawyers for Trinity responded immediately to requests for comment. A federal judge in Pittsburgh reached a similar conclusion earlier in the week in a case involving a newspaper publisher, though she recognized that deference to existing legal precedent seems to be “less ‘in vogue’ as of late.”
Both judges expressed agreement with a September ruling from a federal judge in Detroit, which dismissed an auto parts maker’s challenge to the NLRB. The Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block an NLRB case against the company, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene last week.
Federal judges in Chicago, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C., have also rejected companies’ attempts to halt NLRB proceedings while pursuing claims that the board’s in-house enforcement violates the U.S. Constitution. However, three Republican-appointed judges in Texas took a different stance, citing a 2022 ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit, which found that U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission judges were unlawfully insulated from presidential removal. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on different grounds in June, without addressing the removal issue.
Jonker acknowledged this split but emphasized that he must follow a 2022 6th Circuit decision that upheld removal protections for FDIC administrative judges. He also referenced a 1935 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the FTC’s structure, which, like the NLRB, has five members who set policy and decide individual cases.
The case is Kerwin v. Trinity Health Grand Haven Hospital, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, No. 1:24-cv-00445.
