## Facts

- LeMoyne-Owen College, a private college in Memphis, employed roughly sixty full-time faculty members.
- The faculty sought union representation; the College opposed the petition, claiming the faculty were “managerial employees” excluded from National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) coverage.
- An NLRB Regional Director certified the union; the College refused to recognize and bargain with it.
- The NLRB found the College violated NLRA § 8(a)(1) and § 8(a)(5) by refusing to recognize and bargain with the certified representative and ordered the College to bargain.
- The College petitioned for judicial review in the D.C. Circuit; the NLRB sought enforcement.
- The governance structure included a Board of Trustees and an administration headed by a President; faculty participated in academic governance (e.g., curriculum and academic policy).
- In analyzing managerial status, the NLRB treated faculty influence as discrete categories (e.g., curriculum, admissions, hiring, tenure, promotion) and concluded faculty lacked sufficient final authority in each category.

## Issues

1. Whether the College’s full-time faculty were “managerial employees” excluded from the NLRA under the framework applied to university faculty in NLRB v. Yeshiva University.
2. Whether the NLRB applied the correct legal standard and supported its nonmanagerial finding with substantial evidence.

## Decision

- The court granted the petition for review in part and denied it in part, vacated the NLRB’s order, and remanded.
- The court denied enforcement to the extent the Board’s bargaining order rested on a legally flawed managerial-status analysis.
- The court held the Board used an unduly narrow, compartmentalized approach inconsistent with Yeshiva by examining each area of faculty participation in isolation rather than assessing the faculty’s aggregate role in shaping central institutional policies.
- The court required the Board to reconsider managerial status by evaluating actual practice—whether faculty recommendations are typically followed—rather than relying on administrators’ retained theoretical power to reject faculty input.
- The court did not finally determine whether the faculty were managerial; it required a reassessment under the proper standard.

## Legal Principles

- “Managerial employees” are excluded from NLRA protections when they formulate and effectuate management policies by making operative employer decisions.
- In higher education, faculty may be managerial when, in practice, they effectively control or strongly influence central institutional policies, particularly in core academic matters.
- The managerial-status inquiry focuses on effective influence and actual decisionmaking practice, not merely formal allocations of final authority or the nominal possibility of administrative override.
- The NLRB must evaluate faculty authority in the aggregate across policy domains rather than fragmenting the analysis into isolated functional silos.
- Courts will set aside Board determinations that apply an incorrect legal standard, even while recognizing the Board’s role in factfinding under the substantial-evidence framework.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit vacated the NLRB’s bargaining order and remanded because the Board assessed faculty managerial status using an overly narrow, compartmentalized approach inconsistent with governing Supreme Court doctrine, requiring a holistic evaluation of the faculty’s actual, aggregate influence over central college policy.


LeMoyne-Owen Coll. v. NLRB, 357 F.3d 55 (D.C. Cir. 2004)