Supreme Court’s New Labor Order Test Boosts Access to Evidence

The US Supreme Court’s decision involving Starbucks Corp. that raised the bar for the National Labor Relations Board to obtain temporary court orders also opened a door for employers to use those proceedings to bolster their defenses in the underlying administrative cases.

The justices held Thursday that federal judges shouldn’t give more deference to NLRB requests for injunctions than those of other litigants. That means evidentiary hearings and discovery will likely become commonplace as judges demand a more well-developed record before ruling on the agency’s petitions.

“The employers will, through discovery in district court, obtain a significant amount of evidence ...