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Parties Involved:
National Labor Relations Board
Petitioner
Noel Canning, A Division of the Noel Corporation
Respondent

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Submitted March 24, 2016 Decided May 17, 2016

No. 15-1029

NOEL CANNING, A DIVISION OF THE NOEL CORPORATION,

PETITIONER

v.

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD,

RESPONDENT

Consolidated with 15-1046

On Petition for Review and Cross-Application

for Enforcement of an Order 

of the National Labor Relations Board

Gary E. Lofland and Mark David Watson were on the 

briefs for petitioner.

Richard F. Griffin, Jr., General Counsel, National Labor 

Relations Board, John H. Ferguson, Associate General 

Counsel, Linda Dreeben, Deputy Associate General Counsel, 

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Elizabeth A. Heaney, Supervisory Attorney, and Heather S. 

Beard, Attorney, were on the brief for respondent.

Before: ROGERS and PILLARD, Circuit Judges, and 

SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

SENTELLE.

SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judge: Noel Canning petitions 

for review of a decision and order of the National Labor 

Relations Board, which determined that the petitioner violated 

the National Labor Relations Act and ordered relief against 

petitioner. Petitioner argues that our disposition vacating a 

prior order in the same dispute left no authority with the 

Board to enter this further decision and order. The Board 

cross-petitions for enforcement. Concluding that there is no 

merit in petitioner’s claims, we deny the petition and grant the 

cross-petition for enforcement. 

BACKGROUND

This case comes to our Court for a second time. In 2012, 

petitioner Noel Canning, a division of the Noel Corporation,

petitioned this Court to review a decision and order of the 

National Labor Relations Board holding that Noel Canning 

had violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by 

failing to execute a collective bargaining agreement with its 

employees. We vacated the Board’s decision on the ground 

that three of the Board’s five members had been improperly 

appointed under the Recess Appointments Clause. See Noel 

Canning v. NLRB (Noel Canning I), 705 F.3d 490 (D.C. Cir. 

2013). On certiorari, the Supreme Court affirmed this Court’s 

decision concluding that the appointments were invalid, albeit 

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on modified reasoning. See NLRB v. Noel Canning (Noel 

Canning II), 134 S. Ct. 2550 (2014). 

On December 16, 2014, a panel of the now properly 

reconstituted Board issued a new decision and order 

essentially adopting the Board’s 2012 decision and ordering 

Noel Canning, inter alia, not to refuse to bargain with the 

Teamsters Local 760 chosen by employees as their exclusive 

representative. See Noel Canning, 361 NLRB No. 129 (Dec. 

16, 2014). On February 2, 2015, Noel Canning filed a 

petition for review of the Board’s 2014 decision and order

with this Court. One month later, the Board filed a crossapplication for enforcement. Petitioner offers no challenge to 

the merits of the Board’s latest ruling. Instead, it argues that 

the Board lacked jurisdiction to issue the 2014 decision and 

order because this Court’s opinion in Noel Canning I only 

vacated—never remanded—the Board’s 2012 decision and 

order. Three of our sister circuits have already rejected 

substantially identical challenges to other Board orders. See 

Big Ridge, Inc. v. NLRB, 808 F.3d 705 (7th Cir. 2015); 

Huntington Ingalls Inc. v. NLRB, 631 F. App’x 127 (4th Cir. 

2015); NLRB v. Whitesell Corp., 638 F.3d 883 (8th Cir. 

2011). We do the same today. Because this Court’s decision 

and mandate in Noel Canning I are best interpreted as 

allowing a properly reconstituted Board to reconsider the 

merits, we deny Noel Canning’s petition for review. We

grant the Board’s cross-application for enforcement because 

the 2014 decision and order, like the 2012 decision and order,

was supported by substantial evidence.

DISCUSSION

Noel Canning argues that this case is controlled by 29 

U.S.C. § 160(e), which states that “[u]pon the filing of the 

[Board] record with [the court of appeals] the jurisdiction of 

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the court shall be exclusive and its judgment and decree shall 

be final” except upon review by the Supreme Court. The 

statute also provides that a court may “make and enter a 

decree enforcing, modifying and enforcing as so modified, or 

setting aside in whole or in part the order of the Board.” Id. 

Notably, § 160(e) makes no mention of remand or, more 

generally, when the Board may reassume jurisdiction after 

vacatur. A court’s authority to remand comes instead from its 

“equity powers.” Ford Motor Co. v. NLRB, 305 U.S. 364, 

373 (1939). Therefore, this case is not about § 160(e) as Noel 

Canning would have it, but rather the interpretation of our 

mandate in Noel Canning I. 

The question presented is whether our mandate in Noel 

Canning I permits a properly reconstituted Board to 

reconsider the merits of the case. Noel Canning argues that it

does not. Judicial mandates, Noel Canning claims, must be 

read according to their “precise terms.” NLRB v. Donnelly 

Garment Co., 330 U.S. 219, 226 (1947). Since the Noel 

Canning I opinion and judgment stated only that Noel 

Canning’s petition for review is granted, the Board’s order is 

vacated, and the cross-application for enforcement is 

denied—with no mention of remand—Noel Canning contends 

it cannot be read as giving the Board, once properly 

constituted, authority to take up the case again. See Noel 

Canning I, 705 F.3d at 515; Judgment, Noel Canning I, No. 

12-1115, Doc. No. 1417095 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 25, 2013).

Our sister circuits disagree. In NLRB v. Whitesell 

Corporation, 638 F.3d 883, 888 (8th Cir. 2011), the Eighth 

Circuit considered whether the Board had jurisdiction to 

reissue an order that had been vacated for lack of a quorum in 

light of New Process Steel, L.P. v. NLRB, 560 U.S. 674 

(2010). Like this Court’s judgment in Noel Canning I, the 

Eighth Circuit’s order denying the Board’s application for 

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enforcement did not remand the case. See NLRB v. Whitesell 

Corp., 385 F. App’x 613, 614 (8th Cir. 2010) (unpublished 

per curiam). Nonetheless, when considering the authority of a 

properly constituted Board to reissue the order, the Eighth 

Circuit stated that it had “expected that the Board would visit 

the merits of th[e] case again” with a full complement of 

members. Whitesell Corp., 638 F.3d at 889. Because the 

denial of enforcement had been based on the lack of quorum, 

not the merits, the Eighth Circuit held that its prior decision 

on the New Process issue did “not preclude the Board, now 

properly constituted, from considering [the merits] anew and 

issuing its first valid decision.” Id. The Seventh and Fourth 

Circuits have reached the same conclusions in the wake of 

Noel Canning II. See Big Ridge, Inc., 808 F.3d at 711 

(holding that when it vacated a Board decision without 

remand because the Board lacked a proper quorum, it had

“expected the Board to consider the case anew once it 

regained a quorum”); Huntington Ingalls Inc., 631 F. App’x at

131 (holding that “[a] decision finding the lack of a proper 

quorum clearly contemplates further Board action”). 

Petitioner provides no convincing reason for us to 

interpret our Noel Canning I mandate differently than our 

sister circuits have interpreted theirs. Noel Canning points to 

several cases in which courts have rebuked the Board for 

reopening a matter in the absence of a remand—most notably, 

Int’l Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers v. Eagle-Picher 

Mining & Smelting Co., 325 U.S. 335 (1945); George Banta 

Co. v. NLRB, 686 F.2d 10 (D.C. Cir. 1982); and NLRB v. 

Lundy Packing Co., 81 F.3d 25 (4th Cir. 1996)—but, as the 

Seventh Circuit observed when confronted with many of the 

same precedents, “all of these cases can be distinguished 

because they deal with appellate court rulings on the merits, 

whereas . . . the case at hand involve[s] denial[] of 

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enforcement due to lack of a quorum.” Big Ridge, Inc., 808 

F.3d at 712. This is a distinction with a difference. 

When a court affirms or rejects an agency’s decision on 

the merits, parties to the litigation have important interests in 

the finality of that decision. See Eagle-Picher, 325 U.S. at 

340 (“The party adverse to the administrative body is entitled 

to rely on the conclusiveness of a decree entered by a court to 

the same extent that other litigants may rely on judgments for 

or against them.”). Those interests are absent when a court 

rules only that an administrative body never had a quorum to 

issue a decision in the first place. See Huntington Ingalls, 

Inc., 631 F. App’x at 130-31. In fact, far from promoting 

finality, Noel Canning’s interpretation of this Court’s mandate 

in Noel Canning I actually “deprives the employees” and the 

company itself “from having [the case] resolved on the merits 

once and for all by this court.” Id.

After the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Noel 

Canning II, this Court remanded more than a dozen pending 

cases to the Board, which by then had five validly appointed 

members, so that properly constituted panels could issue new 

rulings on the merits. Cf. Nguyen v. United States, 539 U.S. 

69, 83 (2003) (finding remand to court of appeals

“appropriate” after a case was decided by an improperly 

constituted panel). By contrast, when this Court decided Noel 

Canning I, we did not remand: indeed, “at that time, there 

was no properly constituted Board to which [this Court] could 

remand the proceedings.” Big Ridge, Inc., 808 F.3d at 711. 

Noel Canning’s attempt to exploit these circumstances in 

order to prevent the Board from resolving its case contradicts 

the principle that a “mandate is to be interpreted reasonably 

and not in a manner to do injustice.” Bailey v. Henslee, 309 

F.2d 840, 844 (8th Cir. 1962) (internal quotation marks and 

citation omitted). Here, the Board’s decision to reconsider the 

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merits of the case and issue a new decision and order was not 

only consistent with this Court’s Noel Canning I mandate, but 

also reasonable and in furtherance of justice. 

We offer one further thought with respect to Noel 

Canning’s petition. We recently observed in a different 

context that “common sense sometimes matters in resolving 

legal disputes.” Southern New England Telephone Co. v. 

NLRB, 793 F.3d 93, 94 (D.C. Cir. 2015). It is not totally 

consistent with common sense to suggest that when a petition 

has been filed with an administrative agency and that agency 

reached a decision but a court vacated the decision for reasons 

unrelated to the merits of the petition, the merits issues in the 

case must remain forever undecided. In other words, it seems 

to us highly unlikely that the law would establish that a 

question properly presented to the labor board must pend 

forever if the board for procedural or quorum-related reasons 

invalidly entered its first order.

Turning to the Board’s cross-application for enforcement, 

we note that, in its opening brief, Noel Canning does not 

contest the Board’s findings that it violated Section 8(a)(1) 

and (5) of the NLRA by refusing to reduce to writing and 

execute a collective bargaining agreement arrived at through 

collective bargaining with the Teamsters Local 760. 

Therefore, we may summarily enforce the 2014 decision and 

order. See, e.g., Allied Mech. Servs., Inc. v. NLRB, 668 F.3d 

758, 765 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (uncontested Board findings may 

be summarily enforced). See also Fox v. Gov’t of D.C., 794 

F.3d 25, 29 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (argument not raised in an 

opening brief is forfeited). Moreover, in Noel Canning I, this 

Court concluded that the findings in the Board’s 2012 

decision and order, which were adopted by reference in its 

2014 decision and order, were supported by substantial 

evidence. See 705 F.3d at 493-96. After reviewing the record 

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and the parties’ briefing, we see no reason to depart from that 

conclusion here.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we deny Noel Canning’s 

petition for review and grant the Board’s cross-application for 

enforcement. 

So ordered.

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