Now the NLRB Has the Votes to Overrule. Here Is Its Own List.
James Macy's confirmation gives the Board the three-member majority its custom requires to reverse precedent. For seven months, Murphy and Mayer have been quietly naming the cases they would revisit. All 28 are here.
On August 7, 2026, the Senate confirmed James Macy to the National Labor Relations Board and reconfirmed David Prouty, 51 to 47, as part of a block of nominations. Macy's arrival brings the Board to four members of five and gives it a 3 to 1 Republican majority: Chairman James Murphy, Member Scott Mayer, and Member Macy on one side, Member Prouty on the other. By Board custom it takes three affirmative votes to overturn precedent, and until this week only three members were seated, so Murphy and Mayer could not get there.
For the seven months since the Board regained its quorum on January 7, 2026, Murphy and Mayer have been attaching footnotes to decisions that name a precedent they would revisit once a third vote existed. This post catalogues every one of those flags. Being on this list is not a prediction that any precedent will be overruled. A footnote is a signal, not a holding. Nothing here has been overruled, every case on the list remains binding law today.
Union elections and representation
Sec. 103.20 (blocking-charge policy) (15 decisions) - Regional directors must hold decertification and other Board election petitions in abeyance, and withhold or impound the ballots already cast, whenever a related unfair labor practice charge is pending against the party seeking the election.
Rieth-Riley Construction Co., 371 NLRB No. 109 (7 decisions) - Regional directors may dismiss a decertification petition, subject to later reinstatement, whenever they find merit in a pending unfair labor practice charge that would taint the petition or the election, without first holding a hearing when the alleged misconduct affected the whole bargaining unit.
American Steel Construction, Inc., 372 NLRB No. 23 (6 decisions) - An employer challenging a petitioned-for bargaining unit as too narrow must prove the excluded employees share an overwhelming community of interest with the unit, restoring this heightened standard over a looser one used since 2017.
Cemex Construction Materials Pacific LLC, 372 NLRB No. 130 (3 decisions) - Once a union demonstrates majority support among employees in an appropriate unit, an employer must recognize and bargain with it unless the employer promptly files a petition for a Board-conducted election to test that support, replacing the prior rule letting employers insist on an election in almost every case.
Harborside Healthcare, Inc., 343 NLRB 906 (3 decisions) - Holds that a supervisor's prounion conduct, including soliciting union authorization cards, is objectionable and can void an election if it reasonably tends to coerce employees' free choice and materially affects the outcome, without requiring proof of an explicit threat or promise.
The merger doctrine (3 decisions) - When two unions merge, the surviving union automatically inherits the predecessor union's certification and bargaining rights without a new election, so long as the merger process gave members fair notice and a vote and kept substantial continuity between the old and new organizations.
Sec. 102.64(a) (3 decisions) - A regional director may defer resolution of individual employees' supervisory or eligibility status until after an election rather than litigating it beforehand, so long as those individuals make up a small enough share of the proposed unit that including or excluding them could not significantly change its size or character.
UGL-UNICCO Service Co., 357 NLRB 801 (1 decision) - When a successor employer recognizes an incumbent union, the union's majority status cannot be challenged by an election petition or unilateral withdrawal of recognition for a reasonable bargaining period, generally six months, overruling an earlier decision that had rejected any such insulated period after a business succession.
Siren Retail Corp. d/b/a Starbucks, 373 NLRB No. 135 (1 decision) - Overruled Tri-Cast to require that employer campaign statements about how unionization would change the employer-employee relationship be judged case by case, lawful only if carefully phrased on objective fact to convey demonstrably probable consequences beyond the employer's control.
Signet Testing Laboratories, 330 NLRB 1 (1 decision) - The Board applies the special construction industry voter-eligibility formula from Daniel Construction and Steiny to all construction industry representation elections unless the parties expressly stipulate otherwise, even where their election agreement recites only the standard eligibility language.
Remedies
Thryv, Inc., 372 NLRB No. 22 (30 decisions) - Whenever the Board's standard remedy for an unfair labor practice includes make-whole relief, it must also expressly require the employer to compensate affected employees for all direct or foreseeable financial losses caused by the violation, not just lost wages.
Noah's Ark Processors, LLC d/b/a WR Reserve, 372 NLRB No. 80 (1 decision) - In cases where a respondent shows a proclivity to violate the Act or has engaged in egregious or widespread misconduct warranting a broad cease-and-desist order, the Board may impose expanded remedies such as reading the notice aloud, mailing and publishing it, extending the posting period, requiring supervisors to attend the reading, and requiring a company official to sign it.
Pressroom Cleaners, 361 NLRB 643 (1 decision) - A successor employer that avoids its bargaining duty through discriminatory hiring must keep paying the predecessor's wages and benefits until the parties bargain to agreement or impasse, and cannot prove in compliance proceedings that lawful bargaining would have yielded lower terms, overruling contrary precedent.
Work rules and employee speech
Amazon.com Services LLC, 373 NLRB No. 136 (15 decisions) - Overruling Babcock & Wilcox, this precedent holds that an employer violates the Act when it requires employees, under threat of discipline or discharge, to attend a meeting where the employer expresses its views on unionization.
McLaren Macomb, 372 NLRB No. 48 (1 decision) - Merely offering a severance agreement whose confidentiality or non-disparagement clauses broadly restrict employees from discussing the employer, their employment, or the agreement's own terms itself violates labor law, regardless of whether the employee actually signs it.
Sunbelt Rentals, Inc., 372 NLRB No. 24 (1 decision) - In preparing an employer's defense to an unfair labor practice charge, an employer may question employees about their protected activity only if it discloses the purpose of the questioning, assures the employee that no reprisal will follow, obtains voluntary participation, avoids a hostile or otherwise coercive setting, and limits the questions to what the defense requires, with any departure from these steps making the interrogation automatically unlawful.
Home Depot, 373 NLRB No. 25 (1 decision) - An employee's individual conduct counts as concerted activity under Section 7 when it is a logical outgrowth of prior group complaints, without proof that coworkers specifically authorized it, and protests of racial discrimination in the workplace qualify as mutual aid or protection.
Board procedure
Hospital Metropolitano Rio Piedras, 373 NLRB No. 89 (6 decisions) - Overruled UPMC and ended the Board's practice of approving a consent order that a respondent proposes over the objection of the General Counsel and the charging party, requiring such cases instead to be fully litigated and adjudicated on the merits.
Sec. 102.5(c) (E-filing requirement) (1 decision) - Board rules require parties to file documents with the Agency by E-filing according to the instructions on the Board's website, and treat a filing as received only when it is properly E-filed, not when merely emailed to a regional office.
The Skip Counsel Policy, §10058.2 of the Board's Casehandling Manual, Part One, Unfair Labor Practice Proceedings (1 decision) - This precedent describes the Board's internal Casehandling Manual guidance directing Board attorneys to avoid communicating with a represented party without going through its counsel, tracking the ethical rule against contacting a represented party directly, and stated as nonbinding agency guidance rather than a formal rule requiring notice-and-comment rulemaking.
The "like or related to" settlement-breach doctrine (1 decision) - Under a settlement agreement's standard default clause, if a respondent later commits conduct that is merely similar to or connected with the originally settled unfair labor practices, the Board treats the settlement as breached and enters default judgment on the original allegations without a hearing on the new conduct.
Bargaining obligations
Valley Hospital II, 371 NLRB No. 160 (4 decisions) - An employer must continue deducting and remitting union dues under a checkoff arrangement after the collective-bargaining agreement expires, treating dues checkoff like most other contract terms that survive expiration rather than as an exception employers may end unilaterally.
Endurance Environmental Solutions, LLC, 373 NLRB No. 141 (1 decision) - Overruled the contract-coverage test and restored the rule that an employer may act unilaterally on a mandatory bargaining subject only where the union clearly and unmistakably waived its right to bargain over that subject, not merely where a contract clause broadly covers it.
Finley Hospital, 362 NLRB 915 (1 decision) - An employer may not unilaterally change a term of employment after a contract expires unless the union clearly and unmistakably waived its bargaining right, and generic language merely limiting a provision to the contract's duration does not meet that standard.
Who counts as an employer or employee
Browning-Ferris I, 362 NLRB 1599 (1 decision) - Two entities are joint employers whenever either possesses sufficient control, even if only reserved, exercised indirectly, or never actually exercised, over workers' essential terms and conditions of employment to permit meaningful bargaining.
Brusco Tug & Barge Co., 359 NLRB 486 (1 decision) - Under Section 2(11), an employee who gives coworkers routine, on-the-spot instructions to carry out discrete tasks is not a supervisor unless the employer proves those instructions require independent judgment and the instructor faces real consequences for how the work turns out.
Cook Inlet Tug and Barge, Inc., 362 NLRB 1153 (1 decision) - Employees are not statutory supervisors merely because they direct or select coworkers for tasks unless the employer proves they exercise independent judgment in doing so and are held accountable for those workers' performance, not just their own.
Ukiah Valley Medical Center, 332 NLRB 602 (1 decision) - Under RFRA, the Board may assert jurisdiction over a religiously-affiliated health care institution despite a substantial burden on its free exercise of religion, because preventing labor strife and protecting employees' organizing and bargaining rights are compelling interests served by the least restrictive means.