On June 10, 2020, a three-member panel of the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision limiting its own jurisdiction over the faculty of self-identified religious educational institutions. The Board’s decision in Bethany College is the latest in a long line of cases reviewing the threshold of when the Board may exercise jurisdiction over the faculty of such institutions. Bethany College overrules, in relevant part, the Board’s earlier decision in Pacific Lutheran University , 361 NLRB 1404 (2014) and adopts the jurisdictional test first announced by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in University of Great Falls v. NLRB , 278 F.3d 1335 (D.C. Cir. 2002). In Pacific Lutheran , the Board crafted a two-part, union-friendly jurisdictional test wherein, the Board would decline to exercise jurisdiction over a unit of faculty members at a school claiming to be a religious institution only if the school demonstrated that it: (1) held itself out as providing a religious educational environment; and (2) held out the petitioned-for faculty members as performing a specific role in creating or maintaining school’s religious educational environment. Pacific Lutheran , 361 NLRB at 1414. The second step in the inquiry effectively became […]
