A federal judge in Brooklyn has issued a preliminary injunction preventing Amazon from being subject to a new New York state law that extended the jurisdiction of New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) over private-sector labour disputes. The law – passed by the state earlier this year – had been designed to give PERB the authority to step in while the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) remains without a working majority.
The case at the heart of the ruling involves the dismissal of a union-vice president at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, which the union attempted to challenge under the new state law. The judge ruled that allowing PERB to proceed on such cases would likely conflict with federal labour law, which traditionally grants exclusive authority over private-sector labour relations to the NLRB.
In his decision, the judge cited a 1959 Supreme Court precedent to justify why state-level regulation over private-sector labour could not supplant federal oversight – stressing that the lack of NLRB quorum did not justify a permanent shift of regulatory power to the states. The court also noted that Amazon could suffer “irreparable harm” if the law were enforced, given the risk of conflicting judgements between state and federal labour regulators.
The ruling represents a major test of state efforts to fill institutional enforcement gaps during a period of federal regulatory paralysis. Whether the injunction holds – or whether state-level bodies will attempt revised legislation – remains a key question. For now, the decision preserves the primacy of federal jurisdiction over private-sector labour law, though broader legal and political uncertainty looms.
