Six years before President Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh sided with Trump Entertainment Resorts’ successful effort to thwart a unionization drive at one of its casinos.
Kavanaugh was one of three Republican-appointed judges who in 2012 voted unanimously to set aside an order by the National Labor Relations Board that would have required the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to bargain with the United Auto Workers.
The casino has since shut down. But labor advocates point to the case — as well as ones where he backed management at Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Venetian hotel and at SeaWorld after an orca killed a worker — as evidence that Kavanaugh may hobble enforcement of workplace laws and the already-embattled union movement.
“Kavanaugh, along with Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch — and Roberts along for the ride — will comprise the most radical, anti-labor-law Supreme Court in my lifetime,” said University of Wyoming law professor Michael Duff, a former attorney for the NLRB, ticking off the names of current members of the high court.
