The National Labor Relations Board soon will be back up to five members. But for nearly two and a half years it was short by three. Observers wondered how it managed to function. The U.S. Supreme Court last Thursday ruled it shouldn't have. By a 5-4 margin, the High Court ruled that the NLRB, its ranks diminished by congressional gridlock, had violated its statutory authority in deciding cases during that time. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, termed the two-member board's operations a "Rube Goldberg-style delegation mechanism...surely a bizarre way for the Board to achieve the authority to decide cases." The Court decision could trigger the reopening of up to 600 NLRB decisions. That's something the board wishes it could do without.
