In today’s news and commentary, the NLRB orders Amazon to bargain with workers at a facility in San Francisco and a federal judge issues an order blocking immigration agents nationwide from making arrests inside immigration courts.

On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered Amazon to bargain with workers represented by the Teamsters in San Francisco. The order marks the second bargaining order issued against the company in recent months – Amazon was ordered by the NLRB to recognize and bargain with the worker’s union in Staten Island in April. In the Monday ruling, the NLRB judge found that Amazon violated federal law when it refused to recognize the Teamsters union after it obtained majority support from a group of employees at the delivery center in 2024. The NLRB judge’s ruling relies on Biden-era NLRB precedent, Cemex Construction Materials Pacific LLC. Under Cemex, if a union signs up a legitimate majority of workers, the company is required to either recognize and bargain with the labor group, or ask the NLRB to hold an election testing its support. According to the NLRB on Monday, Amazon did neither. The company has denied wrongdoing, and an Amazon spokesperson, Sam Stephenson, commented, “we disagree with this administrative law judge’s decision, we’re appealing it, and we’re confident that a court will overrule it.”

Next, on Tuesday a federal judge, Judge P. Casey Pitts of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order that blocks ICE agents from making arrests in courthouses. Judge Pitts ruled in a class-action lawsuit that ICE’s policy allowing immigration-related arrests would chill noncitizens’ attendance at court proceedings and consequently was “arbitrary and capricious.” In contrast to an earlier ruling by a federal judge barring such arrests in immigration courts in New York City, Tuesday’s ruling prohibits such arrests anywhere in the country. Since courthouse arrests surged last year, the Department of Homeland Security has argued that the courts are more convenient and safer spaces to detain migrants.