New York watched the federal government give up on labor relations law and tried to do something about it. The state lost. Because the law doesn’t work that way.
Last week, Amazon successfully secured a preliminary injunction blocking New York from enforcing its newly amended State Employment Relations Act. SERA historically covered agricultural and non-employee contractors left unprotected by the NLRA. In September, New York expanded SERA to cover workers traditionally under federal jurisdiction — explicitly citing the Trump administration’s decision to leave the NLRB without a quorum.
But that’s not how the Supremacy Clause works. When the federal government announces its intention to occupy a regulatory field — here, labor law under the NLRA — the states get kicked out of the sandbox. Garmon and Machinists underscore this arrangement, confirming that if conduct is even “arguably” protected or prohibited by Sections 7 or 8, the federal scheme wins.
In the Amazon case, Judge Eric Komitee of the Eastern District of New York did what federal judges are supposed to do: he applied Garmon like it’s been applied for 65 years, slapped New York’s SERA amendment off the table, and told the state to go sit in the corner while the National Labor Relations Board — the federal agency Congress explicitly empowered to regulate labor relations — does its job.
Even though the “federal scheme,” the one that supposedly occupies the field so completely that New York can’t regulate labor relations even when it wants to, isn’t a scheme at all anymore. It’s a smoldering crater where an independent NLRB used to be.
From Judge Komitee’s opinion:
In Garmon, the Supreme Court held that “[w]hen an activity is arguably subject to § 7 or § 8 of the [NLRA], the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence of the [NLRB].” 359 U.S. at 245. This rule “prevents States not only from setting forth standards of conduct inconsistent with the substantive requirements of the NLRA, but also from providing their own regulatory or judicial remedies for conduct prohibited or arguably prohibited by the Act.” Gould, 475 U.S. at 286 (emphasis added).
When Congress created this system, it envisioned a functioning, independent federal agency. It didn’t anticipate an administration that would fire board members in defiance of statutory removal protections, strip the agency of its quorum, and then pledge to keep the agency functionally shut down either through vacancies or stacking the Board with cronies hostile to executing its statutory mission. Does the federal government still “occupy the field” when it’s intentionally sowing the field with salt like it’s Carthage?
New York knew that states have no legal authority to regulate labor relations otherwise covered by the NLRA and would be shut down by the courts if they ever tried. That’s why its law, until recently, only applied to workers excluded from the NLRA. What New York hoped was that the unique circumstances brought on by the federal government under Trump occupying the field in name only would be recognized by the courts as the federal government abandoning the field. Clever theory! Also a failed one.
Judge Komitee acknowledged the state’s argument that these “historically unique circumstances” justified an exception to Garmon. He just couldn’t do anything about it, noting that “the Supreme Court’s clear pronouncements include no ‘unique circumstances’ exception.”
Which turns the Supremacy Clause into both a sword and shield in ways that would give the Framers nightmares.
The federal government, via the NLRA, claims exclusive authority by occupying the space. Then the federal government, via the executive branch acting unilaterally, retreats from that space. And states can’t fill the vacuum because the federal government is still technically “there” — even if they’re only “there” the same way a condemned building is still technically there. But it’s a sword and shield with a separation of powers twist since the Supremacy Clause impliedly gets its power from the idea that a federal law is passed by Congress and signed by the president, while in this case the executive branch is acting alone in repurposing the law.
Shouldn’t that change the analysis? Probably… but that’s not a set of circumstances that federal district courts are really equipped to address.
Because doctrine wasn’t built to handle bad faith. No one thought enough to add a footnote to Garmon about a Twilight Zone scenario where a future executive might seize control over putatively independent agencies and then either gut them or weaponize them to dismantle the very laws they are statutorily put there to enforce.
So states are constitutionally barred from protecting workers, even when the federal government refuses to do so, because the federal government keeps a statute on the books promising that it might theoretically start protecting them again someday.
The constitutional crisis isn’t that the judge got this wrong. It’s that he got it right.
(Full opinion available on the next page…)
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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