Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, PROCEDURE—9th Cir.: Amazon properly denied preliminary injunction to stop NLRB proceedings, (Jan 2, 2026)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

“In the split between the Third and Fifth Circuits, we agree with the Third.”

Affirming a federal district court’s denial of Amazon’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stop administrative proceedings before the NLRB after it was charged with unfair labor practices for refusing to recognize and bargain with a union, the Ninth Circuit held that, subject to exceptions not at issue here, “Congress displaced the federal judiciary’s power to issue injunctive relief in cases ‘involving or growing out of a labor dispute’” and this case, involving constitutional challenges related to the Board, came within the definition of such limitation (Amazon.com Services, Inc. v. Teamsters Amazon National Negotiating Committee, No. 25-886 (9th Cir. Dec. 29, 2025)).

Shortly after Amazon terminated its package-delivery contract with Battle Tested Strategies (BTS), with a two-month post-cancellation window in which BTS continued to deliver Amazon packages, BTS recognized Teamsters Joint Council 42 as the bargaining representative for its drivers. Arguing that Amazon and BTS were joint employers, the union demanded that Amazon bargain with it as the representative of BTS drivers. Amazon declined and ceased contracting with BTS as scheduled.

The Teamsters filed unfair labor practices against Amazon with the NLRB and the General Counsel filed a complaint based on those charges. Amazon then sued the Board, seeking injunctive and declaratory relief establishing that the statutory restrictions on the President’s ability to remove the Board members and ALJs are unconstitutional. It also sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the administrative proceeding from moving forward.

Lower court proceedings. Opposing Amazon’s motion, the Teamsters moved to intervene, which the district court granted. It also denied Amazon’s motion for a preliminary injunction, holding that the Norris-LaGuardia Act displaced its jurisdiction to issue an injunction because this case involves a labor dispute. Even if it had jurisdiction, said the lower court, Amazon failed to show it would suffer any irreparable harm from the asserted unlawful removal restrictions.

Norris-LaGuardia Act. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit noted that the Norris-LaGuardia Act removed the power of the federal courts to issue injunctive relief in cases “involving or growing out of a labor dispute.” The Act defines a “labor dispute” as “any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment, or concerning the association or representation of persons in negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing, or seeking to arrange terms or conditions of employment.” Section 113 of the Act sets forth the conditions under which a case shall be held to involve or grow out of a labor dispute.

Jurisdictional limitations. The Board and Teamsters argued that this case grew out of a labor dispute because Amazon brought a constitutional challenge in the court below only after the Board decided to prosecute the ULP claims raised by the Teamsters against Amazon. For its part, Amazon argued that its constitutional challenges to the Board and its proceedings were too far removed from a labor dispute to trigger the Norris-LaGuardia Act’s jurisdictional limitations. Citing the Fifth Circuit’s 2025 Space Exploration Technologies Corp. v. NLRB decision, Amazon asserted that the Act did not apply because this was not an action between Amazon and its employees, the parties here were not “engaged in the same industry, trade, craft, or occupation,” and its constitutional claims did not relate to the terms or conditions of employment.

Although the court agreed that Section 113(a) of the Norris-LaGuardia Act imposes separate requirements related to the pending case and the underlying labor dispute, it pointed out that “When Congress uses ‘one term in one place, and a materially different term in another, the presumption is that the different term denotes a different idea” and “Amazon’s proposed reading of the Act, and the one adopted by the Fifth Circuit, flouts this rule by ignoring the different statutory descriptions for the case and the underlying dispute.” The court also found Amazon’s proposed reading at odds with the Third Circuit’s recent decision in Spring Creek Rehabilitation & Nursing Center LLC v. NLRB.

The text of the Act, said the court, provides that the underlying labor dispute must concern “terms or conditions of employment, or... the association or representation of persons,” while the pending case need only “involve or... grow out of” that dispute, it need not itself be a labor dispute. “Thus,” the court continued, “SpaceX’s reasoning that the Norris-LaGuardia Act did not apply because a case raising constitutional challenges to the Board’s structure did not concern ‘terms or conditions of employment, or... the association or representation of persons,’ is inapt.”

Case. Pointing out that Section 113(a) imposes separate mandates for the pending case and the underlying labor dispute, the court explained that Section 113’s explication of case requires one of two categories to be satisfied. The first centers on the status of the “persons” involved in the case and the second on the interests involved. The Supreme Court, construing Section 113, reasoned that a case involves or grows out of a labor dispute under the Act when the “persons” identified are “involved on both sides of the case” or when the case “‘involves any conflicting or competing interests’ in a labor dispute of ‘persons’ who stand in any one of several defined economic relationships.” As to the meaning of “involves,” the court, looking to dictionary definitions, concluded that “a case must entangle or envelop the persons or interests described.”

Finding Section 113(a)’s case-related requirements met here, the court explained that “Both Amazon and the Teamsters are entangled in or implicated in the issues to be decided here because Amazon’s constitutional challenges concern the agency’s adjudication of the ULP claims that the Teamsters initiated.” While Amazon relied on the fact that it did not name the Teamsters as a party to this lawsuit, the Teamsters, the court observed, intervened without objection from Amazon and the district court determined that they could “participate in this action as a full party.”

Labor dispute. Next, the court found the underlying Board proceeding was a labor dispute. It concerns the terms of employment and the representation of the BTS drivers and is “between one or more employers... and one or more employees or associations of employees,”—namely, Amazon and the Teamsters.

SpaceX. Relying on SpaceX, Amazon argued that the Act did not apply because the case involved a suit between Amazon and the NLRB, not between Amazon and its employees. But this argument, said the court, “fails to distinguish between the case-related and labor dispute-related requirements. A controversy ‘between one or more employers... and one or more employees or associations of employees’ is one of the forms of labor disputes that trigger § 113(a). The pending case does not itself have to be in this form to ‘involve or... grow out of a labor dispute.’” Further, said the court, the Act’s statutory history reinforces that the Act’s application is not confined to lawsuits between employers and employees.

As to SpaceX’s observation that “Congress passed the Act ‘in response to federal-court intervention on behalf of employers through the use of injunctive powers against unions and other associations of employees,’” the court here noted that “‘the will of Congress’ is reflected in its legislative text, and we undermine that will if we read the text ‘in a spirit of mutilating narrowness.’” Moreover, the court reasoned, “Amazon’s requested injunction would impede union activities, the very outcome the Act was enacted to prevent.” Thus, said the court, “enjoining the Board’s adjudication of those issues would enjoin the Teamsters’ efforts to receive the labor protections afforded by Congress.”

Observing that the existence of a labor dispute could not reasonably be contested, the court found the constitutional nature of Amazon’s claim was not determinative. “Amazon’s constitutional challenges concern the Board’s power to adjudicate the labor dispute that exists between Amazon and the Teamsters. Indeed, Amazon acknowledges that ‘[t]his lawsuit was sparked by’ those proceedings.”

Thunder Basin factors. Finally, the court rejected Amazon’s argument that it should adopt SpaceX’s application of the Thunder Basin factors. The Fifth Circuit, in SpaceX, held that even if the Norris-LaGuardia Act’s “plain text [was] not dispositive,” suits involving constitutional challenges to the Board “would still fall within the district courts’ jurisdiction” under Thunder Basin. Calling that invocation of Thunder Basin was misplaced, the court explained that the “question is not whether the Norris-LaGuardia Act implicitly divests courts of jurisdiction over a type of claim. It is whether the explicit text of the Act bars jurisdiction to issue injunctions. That question is answered by the text, not by Thunder Basin.”

Thus, affirming the denial of Amazon’s motion for a preliminary injunction, the court found that it lacked the power to grant the injunctive relief Amazon sought.

The case is No. 25-886.

Judge: Forrest, D.

Attorneys: Brian Michael Stolzenbach (Seyfarth Shaw) for Amazon.com Services, LLC, and Amazon Logistics, Inc. Julie Gutman-Dickinson (Bush Gottlieb) for Teamsters Amazon National Negotiating Committee. David Paul Boehm for the NLRB, Marvin E. Kaplan, David M. Prouty, William Cowen, and J. Doe.

Companies: Amazon.com Services, LLC; Amazon Logistics, Inc.; Teamsters Amazon National Negotiating Committee

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