In today’s News and Commentary, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette announces it will shut down in response to its longstanding labor dispute, Texas AFT sues the state for chilling protected First Amendment speech, Baltimore approves its first project labor agreement, and the Board formally regains its quorum.

Yesterday, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette announced it would shut down after over 200 years in response to losses and its longstanding labor dispute. Just hours after the Supreme Court refused to stay a Third Circuit order requiring the newspaper to reinstate a 2014-2017 contract for union workers, the newspaper alerted its staff that it would cease operations in May. Following changes to their employment, union workers went on strike for three years beginning in 2022. In November of this year, the Third Circuit ordered the newspaper to reimplement the terms of its 2014-2017 union contract. President Andrew Goldstein of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburg stated that rather than “simply following the law, the owners chose to punish local journalists and the city of Pittsburgh.” According to the News Guild, closing the newspaper does not allow ownership to escape legal liability, which requires the company to retroactively pay workers.

On Tuesday, Texas AFT filed a lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency alleging that the Agency’s recent investigations into educators’ speech infringed on teachers’ First Amendment rights. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Agency announced it would investigate teachers whose speech the director considered “vile” or which constituted “inappropriate conduct.” After the agency announced the policy, teachers have faced retaliation, including termination, for engaging in speech on social media including on private accounts. According to Texas AFT, over 350 teachers and other public school employees have been reported or are under investigation by the Agency. Texas AFT, seeking an injunction, argues that the policy is impermissibly vague and overbroad.

Two weeks after Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott announced plans for Baltimore’s first project labor agreement in partnership with the Baltimore DC Metro Building Trades Council, the Baltimore Board of Estimates approved the partnership. The agreement will require contactors on some projects to abide by certain procedures and use union labor. Coalitions of nonunion contractors, however, challenged the agreement as an illegal limit on competition and claim the contracts lack standard termination procedures. But Baltimore city attorneys argue that there is no legal obligation to complete the contracts.

Finally, Bloomberg reports that following the formal swearing in of James Murphy and Scott Mayer yesterday, the NLRB now faces a backlog of over 500 cases.