On February 3, 2025, President Trump appointed William B. Cowen as Acting General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Cowen has previously served in a variety of roles throughout the agency, including most recently as Regional Director for the Los Angeles Regional Office and previously as the NLRB’s Solicitor and an NLRB member. Cowen fills the role left vacant by President Trump’s firings of both Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB General Counsel appointed by President Biden, and Jessica Rutter, who served as Abruzzo’s Deputy General Counsel and took over as Acting General Counsel when Abruzzo was fired.
As we described in a previous post, the NLRB’s General Counsel serves an important role, acting as the agency’s chief prosecutor and overseeing the NLRB’s regional offices that investigate unfair labor practice charges and manage union elections. In a very direct way, the General Counsel helps set the NLRB’s agenda by deciding what legal theories and cases to bring before the NLRB.
On February 14, in a move that was widely anticipated, Cowen issued his first General Counsel Memorandum (GC 25-05), rescinding more than 30 memoranda issued by General Counsel Abruzzo during the Biden administration. Cowen promised further guidance would be forthcoming on topics covered in a subset of the rescinded memoranda, including remedies in unfair labor practice proceedings, injunctions under Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the NLRB’s recent Cemex decision, and other case handling matters.
NLRB General Counsel Memoranda do not have the effect of law, and rescinding memoranda of the prior administration does not change existing NLRB precedent. The General Counsel uses memoranda to set priorities and give opinions about legal issues. It is the NLRB, itself, that creates the legal standards applicable to employers and employees by issuing binding decisions.
After President Trump’s unprecedented firing of NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, the NLRB only has two remaining members, which is short of the three-member quorum needed to make final rulings or to reverse prior Biden era decisions. More details about Wilcox’s removal can be found here. As of now, employers will have to carefully work through the minefield of prior Biden era decisions. While many of those prior decisions are likely to be overturned if and when President Trump appoints additional members to the NLRB, the NLRB’s Regional Offices, for now, are likely to continue to follow current NLRB decisions when processing new charges and elections.
For more information, please contact Ken Sparks at ksparks@vedderprice.com, Gene Boyle at eboyle@vedderprice.com, Peyton Demith at pdemith@vedderprice.com, or any other Vedder Price attorney with whom you have worked.