Employers acquiring a business with a unionized workforce may soon have more flexibility to challenge the incumbent union’s status than they have had for decades. On July 21, the D.C. Circuit held in Hospital Menonita de Guayama, Inc. v. NLRB that the National Relations Labor Board (NLRB ) never had the authority to impose its “successor bar” doctrine, a rule that generally requires a successor employer to continue bargaining with an existing union for up to a year after an acquisition. As one of the first appellate decisions to reject an NLRB doctrine since the U.S. Supreme Court ended automatic deference to federal agencies, other doctrines built on similarly thin statutory footing may be next.
