Rosewood Care, LLC, a nursing and rehabilitation facility, has served New Yorkers for over 40 years and prides itself on being one of the state’s premier care facilities. Now, the company is also fighting for the right to trial by jury.
In 2022, Rosewood Care objected to union organizers’ meetings with employees throughout Rosewood’s property. Rosewood had allowed—and continued to allow—union representatives to meet with employees in their breakroom. Union representatives continued to meet employees elsewhere, including in a parking lot that was not owned by Rosewood.
After the union complaint, the NLRB brought Rosewood in for a hearing before an administrative law judge (ALJ)—an in-house official employed by the very agency prosecuting the case. The ALJ sided with the union, claiming that Rosewood had committed unfair labor practices by denying union representatives access to Rosewood’s property beyond the employee breakroom, and imposed a slew of penalties.
Not only is the ruling against Rosewood lacking substantial evidence, but the proceedings’ entire structure is unconstitutional.
The NLRB doesn’t just enforce the law; it also investigates violations, brings charges, and then adjudicates those charges through its own internal judges. There is no neutral courthouse and no independent jury. That arrangement violates the Constitution in several ways.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to have a jury decide factual disputes in civil cases—not a government-employed judge with no accountability to the parties.
Allowing an agency to adjudicate the potential restriction of one’s private rights also violates the separation of powers, the constitutional principle that keeps any one branch or body from accumulating too much authority. When an agency decides its own penalties, it isn’t just enforcing the law; it’s usurping Congress’ authority by attempting to write the law.
A victory for Rosewood would affirm that the government has to play by the same rules as everyone else when it comes after a business—in a real court, before a neutral judge and jury.
What’s At Stake?
- All Americans are entitled to a fair trial in a real court of law, before a neutral judge and a jury of their peers. When the government investigates, prosecutes, and adjudicates disputes in its own tribunals instead, it undermines the ancient right to trial by jury.
- When an agency starts inventing punishments that Congress never authorized, it has crossed the line from enforcing the law to making it. The Constitution gives Congress—not unelected bureaucrats—the power to make laws, including deciding what penalties those laws allow.
