(Washington, D.C.)—The AFL-CIO and the Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) filed a motion to intervene with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision in the SpaceX case. The motion asks the court to allow OPEIU to defend the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) authority and protect workers’ ability to seek justice for labor law violations with the agency.

“The NLRB is one of workers’ primary pathways for justice when their rights are violated. Elon Musk has a long history of union-busting, so it’s no surprise that he is trying to keep the NLRB from holding other employers accountable," said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “This case isn’t only about one workplace or one union—it’s about making sure working people aren’t silenced and that the law still works for all it’s meant to serve. America’s workers are depending on the Supreme Court to stand up for the NLRB and its authority, and against bosses like Elon who want to freeze it into inaction. That’s why the labor movement won’t back down without a fight.”

“In a time when the rights of working people are being stripped away, this case is crucial to OPEIU’s efforts to defend workers. The Supreme Court must continue to allow workers’ rights to be vindicated by the NLRB,” said OPEIU President Tyler Turner.

The 5th Circuit’s decision in Space Exploration Technologies Corporation v. NLRB, or the “SpaceX” case, allows employers to easily obtain injunctions blocking the NLRB from hearing any case, even when workers are fired or punished for trying to organize a union. As the filing makes clear, the court’s ruling “charted a radically different course” by allowing companies to stop NLRB cases “without showing any harm,” a move that “wreak[s] havoc on lawful administrative agency proceedings” and risks shutting down enforcement of workers’ rights across Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The motion asks the court to permit OPEIU to intervene in the case in order to urge reversal of the 5th Circuit’s ruling and allow OPEIU to defend its members and supporters.

The full motion to intervene can be found online here, and the petition to the Supreme Court can be found here.