Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—Amazon.com sues New York State claiming new labor law is unconstitutional, (Sep 24, 2025)
Organizations Mentioned:Labor Relations
By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.
The law has already been challenged separately by the NLRB.
In a complaint filed earlier this week, Amazon.com Services LLC has challenged the constitutionality of a recently-enacted New York law that would allow the New York State Public Employee Relations Board to oversee private-sector labor disputes in circumstances where the NLRB is unable to act, i.e., when it lacks a quorum. Amazon claims that the law (the “SERA Amendment”) “flips U.S. labor law on its head: it presumes PERB jurisdiction over every private-sector employer until the NLRB gets a court to hold otherwise.”
A similar lawsuit was filed by the NLRB earlier this month. Amazon’s lawsuit, however, includes an as-applied challenge based on a PERB case that has been filed against the retail giant.
New York sought to fill “void”.S.8034A (as well as its companion A.B.8590A) amends Section 715 of the New York State Labor Relations Act, N.Y. Lab. Law § 715 (2025) and was signed by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul on September 6, 2025. Less than a week later, the Trump Administration’s NLRB had filed its lawsuit, arguing that the state law is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act.
The changes made by SERA Amendment authorize the New York State Public Employment Relations Board to assert jurisdiction over disputes between employers and recognized employee organizations if the National Labor Relations Board is unable to successfully assert jurisdiction. When the legislation was passed, PERB Chair Timothy Connick explained that PERB was “ready to fill the void left by Trump’s NLRB and protect the rights of workers and organized labor across the state.”
Includes as-applied challenge. In this new challenge by Amazon, it has included both facial and as-applied challenges to the SERA Amendment. Amazon argues that the law not only conflicts with federal labor law in theory but has already harmed the company in practice. It alleges that not long after the bill was passed PERB “invoked its new authority under the SERA Amendment to haul Amazon into state proceedings over a dispute already pending before the NLRB” in response to an unfair labor practice charge filed by the Amazon Labor Union-International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 1 (ALU) on behalf of a former employee at Amazon’s JFK8 Staten Island fulfillment center (PERB Case No. UP-40005).
Conflicting labor system. Moreover, in addition to overlap with the NLRA, Amazon alleges that the SERA Amendment also differs from the federal law in significant ways. For example, Amazon contends that SERA lacks protections for employer speech, does not prohibit unfair labor practices by unions, and allows state intervention in labor disputes—powers it argues the NLRA deliberately withholds in order to preserve the “free play of economic forces.” These variances, Amazon argues, demonstrate that New York is not just filling a regulatory gap but is instead imposing both a parallel and conflicting labor law system.
Amazon includes counts for alleged violations of the Supremacy Clause (including Garmon and Machinists preemption) and Due Process.
The lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of New York; the case is No. 1:25-cv-05311.
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