Overview
- In a 53-43 vote on Dec. 18, the Senate confirmed Scott Mayer and James Murphy to the National Labor Relations Board and Crystal Carey as the agency’s general counsel.
- The confirmations reestablish a three-member quorum with Mayer, Murphy, and David Prouty, enabling the Board to resume issuing decisions in representation and unfair-labor-practice cases and to begin working through a backlog.
- Carey, a former NLRB attorney and Morgan Lewis partner, will set enforcement priorities and decide which legal issues are brought to the Board.
- With two Republican appointees and one Democratic member, the Board may narrow recent union-friendly rulings but is unlikely to overturn precedent without a third vote.
- Legal questions over presidential removal power persist, as a federal appeals court upheld the firing of Member Gwynne Wilcox and the Supreme Court is expected to rule on a related FTC case with implications for multi-member agencies.