Family-owned veal company sues to stop NLRB’s unlawful in-house tribunals

Washington, DC; June 10, 2026: Yesterday, a family-owned New York butcher shop filed a petition in the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit challenging the National Labor Relations Board’s use of in-house tribunals to prosecute, judge, and punish the businesses it targets.

“The Constitution guarantees a fair process in a real court when the government claims you did something wrong,” said Oliver Dunford, senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. “Agencies that use in-house tribunals rather than independent courts, like the NLRB does, blatantly violate this constitutional guarantee. The power to adjudicate people’s rights to life, liberty, and property belongs to the courts alone, and no act of Congress can change that.”

Phil Peerless has run Atlantic Veal & Lamb out of Brooklyn, New York, since taking over the company his father founded in 1956. When the COVID-19 pandemic devastated his key customers — restaurants and cruise lines — Phil was forced to lay off most of his employees. While Atlantic Veal was negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the union, economic realities forced Atlantic Veal to let more employees go. After the union complained, the NLRB launched an enforcement action — not in federal court before a neutral judge, but in its own in-house tribunal, where the agency wrote the rules, employed the judge, and heard the appeal itself.

Atlantic Veal has now petitioned for judicial review and argues that the NLRB’s in-house courts violate the Constitution’s guarantee of a fair trial and its requirement that only independent federal courts hold the power to adjudicate legal disputes and impose punishment. A victory would force the NLRB — and agencies like it — back into real courtrooms where ordinary business owners can have a fair trial before a neutral judge and jury.

Pacific Legal Foundation represents Atlantic Veal free of charge. The case is Atlantic Veal & Lamb, LLC v. NLRB.