NLRB has a Quorum: 2 Pro-Business Republicans, 1 Pro-Union Democrat

BREAKING Per Bloomberg Law:

The NLRB can now tackle a backlog of hundreds of cases following the official swearing in of two new Republican members nearly three weeks after they won Senate confirmation.

Members James Murphy, a former NLRB lawyer who returned from retirement to serve on the board, and Scott Mayer, most recently Boeing Co.’s chief labor counsel, joined Democrat David Prouty to give the board the quorum of members needed to issue rulings.

The agency didn’t announce who will serve as chair, a position that’s been vacant since Marvin Kaplan’s term ended in August.

Although the agency continued to function through 2025, the board’s inability to decide cases has generated an enormous backlog of cases. Murphy said in his Senate nomination hearing—more than three months ago—that the backlog had reached 500 cases.

In addition, General Counsel Crystal Carey officially took control of the agency’s legal branch, which had been headed by acting GC William Cowen since February 2026.

The formal appointments of Murphy and Mayer give the board a stable quorum for the first time in 132 days.

The newly revived board is expected to begin issuing opinions right away.

For Carey, her appointment means she can start laying the groundwork for overturning Biden-era precedents and convincing the Republican-majority board to apply a more management-friendly view of federal labor law.

One of the former Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius LLP lawyer’s first substantive actions as GC will likely be issuing her memo that highlights what Biden-era labor law changes she will try to get the board to strike down.

Carey’s targets will probably include cases that employer advocates have most frequently complained about, including:

Cemex Construction Materials Pacific LLC , which created strong disincentives for violating labor law prior to union elections;

Thryv, Inc. , which expanded the board’s remedial power to require companies to pay workers for the downstream financial consequences of their unfair labor practices; and

Lion Elastomers LLC , which revived the use of context-dependent tests for deciding whether a worker’s language or conduct is so egregious that it loses the protection of the National Labor Relations Act.

But the NLRB might wait until another Republican member is installed before remaking board law, in observance of the longtime agency tradition of not changing precedent without three votes in the affirmative.