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The\u00a0Supreme Court<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday made it harder for the federal government to win court orders when it suspects a company of interfering in unionization campaigns in a case that stemmed from a labor dispute with\u00a0Starbucks<\/a>.<\/p>\n The justices tightened the standards for when a federal court should issue an order to protect the jobs of workers during a union organizing campaign.<\/p>\n The court rejected a rule that some courts had applied to orders sought by the National Labor Relations Board in favor of a higher threshold, sought by Starbucks<\/a>, that must be met in most other fights over court orders, or injunctions.<\/p>\n The NLRB had argued that the National Labor Relations Act, the law that governs the agency, has for more than 75 years allowed courts to grant temporary injunctions if they find requests \u201cjust and proper.\u201d The agency said the law doesn\u2019t require it to prove other factors and was intended to limit the role of the courts.<\/p>\n The case began in February 2022, when Starbucks\u00a0fired seven workers<\/a>\u00a0who were trying to unionize their Tennessee store. The NLRB obtained a court order forcing the company to rehire the workers while the case wound its way through\u00a0the agency\u2019s administrative proceedings<\/a>. Such proceedings can take up to two years.<\/p>\n A district court judge agreed with the NLRB and issued a temporary injunction ordering Starbucks to rehire the workers in August 2022. After the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, Starbucks appealed to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n Five of the seven workers are still employed at the Memphis store, while the other two remain involved with the organizing effort, according to Workers United, the union organizing Starbucks workers. The Memphis store\u00a0voted to unionize<\/a>\u00a0in June 2022.<\/p>\n As as the case proceeded, animosity between\u00a0Workers United<\/a>\u00a0and Starbucks\u00a0began to fade<\/a>. The two sides announced in February that they would restart talks with the aim of\u00a0reaching contract agreements<\/a>\u00a0this year, and they held their first bargaining session in nearly a year in late April.<\/p>\n Workers at 437 company-owned U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since late 2021, according to the NLRB, but\u00a0none of those stores<\/a>\u00a0has secured a labor agreement with Starbucks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n