Dental practice challenges NLRB’s power to punish without juries

New Orleans, Louisiana; October 6, 2026: A Texas dental practice filed its opening brief yesterday in its challenge to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) power to impose monetary damages without a jury trial. Aqua Dental argues that the agency’s in-house enforcement system violates its constitutional rights by letting the NLRB investigate, prosecute, decide, and punish the practice outside a real court.

“The Seventh Amendment guarantees a jury trial when the government seeks money from a private party,” said Oliver Dunford, a senior attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation. “Aqua Dental deserves the freedom to defend itself before a neutral judge and jury, not an administrative tribunal stacked in the government’s favor.”

Aqua Dental is a Texas-based dental practice that terminated an employee after a profanity-laced confrontation with a coworker. The NLRB responded by bringing an unfair-labor-practices case in its own administrative tribunal, where an agency judge ruled against Aqua Dental and ordered remedies including reinstatement and compensation for “direct or foreseeable pecuniary harms.”

Federal labor law allows the Board to order reinstatement of employees, but Congress never authorized the NLRB to award open-ended damages. And under the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in SEC v. Jarkesy, agencies cannot sidestep the Seventh Amendment when the government seeks money from a private party. A victory would protect Aqua Dental and others from being forced to litigate private money disputes inside agency-run courts.

Pacific Legal Foundation represents Aqua Dental free of charge. The case is Floss N Gloss PA d/b/a Aqua Dental v. National Labor Relations Board.