Amazon claims in a federal lawsuit that the structure of the NLRB is unconstitutional

In a lawsuit, Amazon is questioning the structure of the National Labor Relations Board and accusing the agency of improperly influencing the outcome of a union election at one of the company's warehouses more than two years ago.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in San Antonio, echoes legal arguments the tech giant made before the agency earlier this year after NLRB prosecutors accused the company of pursuing policies that made it difficult for workers to unionize and of retaliating against some workers who did so.

In the new complaint, Amazon's lawyers referred to a lawsuit the agency filed against the company in March 2022, about a week before union voting was scheduled to begin at a company warehouse in New York's Staten Island borough.

Amazon views the agency's lawsuit seeking to force the company to give a union leader his job back as an improper attempt to influence the election results. The company has also described the lawsuit as one of its objections to the historic election in which workers voted for union representation for the first time in the United States.

Last month, the NLRB board rejected Amazon's request to review its objections, removing any opportunity for the company to overturn the election results within the agency.

In its new complaint, Amazon said the four NLRB board members who approved the injunction later served as judges who reviewed the objections presented to them. Amazon argued that this structure was unconstitutional because board members are protected from being fired by the president. This violated Amazon's due process rights as well as its right to a jury trial.

Other companies, such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Trader Joe's, have also challenged the agency's structure in pending court cases or administrative proceedings. Kayla Blado, spokeswoman for the NLRB's general counsel, pointed out that while major companies have tried to challenge the NLRB, the Supreme Court upheld the agency's constitutionality in 1937.

“While the current challenges require the NLRB to devote scarce resources to defending against them, we have seen that the ultimate consequences of these types of challenges are a delay in justice, but that justice ultimately prevails,” Blado said.

Earlier this year, NLRB chief legal counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, appointed by President Joe Biden, said at an event that the appeals were intended to prevent the agency from enforcing labor laws because companies “distract from the fact that they are actually breaking laws.”

Amazon is asking the court to issue an order preventing the agency from initiating “unconstitutional” administrative proceedings against the company as the case progresses.

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