Amicus Brief: AHA-FAH Amici Brief (Caesars Entertainment Corp.)

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In response to the Board’s Notice and Invitation to File Briefs dated August 1, 2018, the American Hospital Association (“AHA”) and the Federation of American Hospitals (“FAH”) respectfully submit this brief as amici curiae in support of Respondent.

The Amici strongly support the return to the Register Guard, 351 NLRB 1110 (2007), standard for accessing employer-provided email systems and applying that standard to all employer-owned communication systems. Register Guard adequately protects employee Section 7 rights and is consistent with the Board’s longstanding rules regarding employee use of employer property. Under Register Guard, an employer is permitted to limit employee use of employer provided work email systems unless the employer engages in “disparate treatment of activities or communications of a similar character because of their union or other Section 7-protected status.” Id. at 1119. Thus, an employer would not be prohibited “from drawing lines on a non-Section 7 basis” that regulate access by employees. Id. at 1118. Purple Communications, 361 NLRB 1050 (2014), on the other hand, upended this framework and was wrongly decided for the reasons discussed in the amici curiae brief of the Coalition for a Democratic Workforce and the Retail Industry Leaders Association.1 The AHA and the FAH joins those amici briefs and will not repeat those arguments here.