Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB

Does the National Labor Relations Board have the discretion to award backpay to an undocumented alien employee who was not legally authorized to work in the United States?

No. In a 5-4 opinion delivered by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the Court held that such relief is foreclosed by federal immigration policy, as expressed by Congress in the IRCA. The Court reasoned that allowing the Board to award backpay to illegal aliens ran counter to explicit statutory prohibitions critical to federal immigration policy and that however broad the Board's discretion to fashion remedies when dealing only with the NLRA was, it was not so unbounded as to authorize the award. "Congress has expressly made it criminally punishable for an alien to obtain employment with false documents. There is no reason to think that Congress nonetheless intended to permit backpay where but for an employer's unfair labor practices, an alien-employee would have remained in the United States illegally, and continued to work illegally, all the while successfully evading apprehension by immigration authorities," wrote Chief Justice Rehnquist. Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Longshoremen's Union v. Boyd

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Rosenberg v. Yee Chien Woo

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The Oyez Project: Civil Rights Issues - Immigration and Naturalization, Miscellaneous Decisions

Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB

Longshoremen's Union v. Boyd

Reagan v. Abourezk

Rosenberg v. Yee Chien Woo