Justice Stevens Punches Big Labor in the Nose on the Way Out

Justice John Paul Stevens, who will be retiring a the end of this Supreme Court term, has rarely if ever sided with the court's conservatives on 5-4 decisions (this may be the first time).  And shockingly, it comes in a decision hated by Big Labor:

More than 500 decisions by the leading federal agency that referees disputes between labor and management will have to be reopened after the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the five-member board had operated illegally when its membership dwindled to two.

The high court, in a 5-4 ruling in which the court's leading liberal — retiring Justice John Paul Stevens — sided with the court's four most conservative members, said the law does not allow the National Labor Relations Board to operate while it is short-staffed because of political arguments.

"If Congress had intended to authorize two members alone to act for the Board on an ongoing basis, it could have said so in straightforward language," Stevens said. "Congress instead imposed the requirement that the Board delegate authority to no fewer than three members, and that it have three participating members to constitute a quorum."

Allowing two members to run the agency because Congress and the White House can't agree on new members would be letting the board "create a tail that would not only wag the dog, but would continue to wag after the dog has died," Stevens said.

The decision means that more than 500 of employee-employer cases decided by the NLRB while its membership had dropped to two must now be reopened by the board, which currently has four members.

"Now hundreds of decisions in cases already decided by the NLRB will have to be reopened, needlessly delaying finality for workers who were led to believe they already had it," said Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director of American Rights at Work.

Stevens wrote the court's opinion, and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia , Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Maybe the way to kill these silly boards and commissions is to simply refuse to appoint new members when people quit. We could put a lot of stupid things out of business that way.