Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies · Major · Needs Congress

Discard card check and mandate secret ballot union elections

Not started

603 18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies

“Discard “card check.” Congress should discard “card check” as the basis of union recognition and mandate the secret ballot exclusively.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Congress has not discarded card check. The Secret Ballot Protection Act (H.R. 2241, introduced 2025-03-21) and the Employee Rights Act (H.R. 4154, S. 2984), which would bar recognition on anything but a secret ballot, were each referred to committee and went no further; introduction by a member is not a step by Congress. The National Labor Relations Board has not overruled *Cemex*, the 2023 decision that made a bargaining order the default remedy after a tainted election.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Negative search (playbook 1.6).

  • bills.ndjson title match on card check|secret ballot|Employee Rights Act: H.R. 2241 (Secret Ballot Protection Act, referred 2025-03-21), H.R. 4154 (Employee Rights Act, referred 2025-06-26), S. 2984 (Employee Rights Act, referred 2025-10-08). No floor action on any of them.
  • public-laws.ndjson (104 laws): nothing.
  • Federal Register full-text "card check" and "secret ballot" "union" since 2025-01-20: no NLRB rulemaking on union recognition. The only NLRB rule in the window is the 2026-02-27 withdrawal of the 2023 joint-employer standard.

Lead — a court, not Congress. On 2026-03-06 the Sixth Circuit, in Brown-Forman Corp. v. NLRB, Nos. 24-2107/25-1060, declined to enforce a bargaining order because the Board had relied solely on the Cemex standard, which the court held was created through an improper exercise of adjudicatory authority: https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/26a0070p-06.pdf That narrows card-check-style bargaining orders in one circuit; it is not the statutory change the Quote asks for, and the D.C. and Ninth Circuits have upheld Cemex-era bargaining orders on the older Gissel ground rather than reaching the question. No Status event is recorded from it.

Action
eliminate
Object
Card check union recognition
ID
1658