Those of us who have been following the Lion Elastomers saga know it has been a long road. We previously covered the Board’s 2023 decision in Lion Elastomers II, and when the Fifth Circuit vacated that decision in 2024, we wrote about what it meant for employers.
On September 23, 2026, the Board finally brought the case to a close — at least for now — issuing Lion Elastomers LLC, 375 NLRB No. 41 (2026) (Lion Elastomers III), a precedential decision confirming that the traditional Wright Line test applies when an employer disciplines an employee for offensive or abusive conduct that occurred during otherwise protected activity.
For employers who have been managing this uncertainty for years, this is a meaningful development, and one worth understanding in some depth.
The Wright Line Framework
Wright Line has been the NLRB’s standard framework for mixed-motive cases since Wright Line, Inc., 251 NLRB 1083 (1980), and was approved by the Supreme Court in NLRB v. Transportation Management… Read the complete article here...
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