Brown-Forman handed out raises and bourbon to stop a union – then the NLRB stepped in
A federal appeals court just struck down the NLRB's strongest weapon for forcing union recognition after tainted elections.
On March 6, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit handed Brown-Forman Corporation a significant win, invalidating the National Labor Relations Board's Cemex bargaining-order standard in the first appellate test of the controversial 2023 policy. The 2-1 ruling raises questions about other NLRB cases relying on the same standard and redraws the remedial landscape for employers navigating union organizing campaigns.
The dispute began at Brown-Forman's Woodford Reserve facility in Versailles, Kentucky, where employees started talking to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in February 2022 about forming a union. Wages had stagnated even as production ramped up, and a $1-per-hour raise the company announced did little to quiet the discontent.
When management learned that the Teamsters likely held authorization cards from 50 to 60 percent of employees, internal emails revealed the alarm. Executives moved quickly to put together a compensation package that would blunt the campaign's momentum. Despite having told workers that no further raises were coming until the next fiscal year, the company reversed course and announced a $4-per-hour across-the-board increase – the first time Woodford Reserve employees had ever received two across-the-board wage increases in the same year. Management also expanded its pay-progression policy to cover newly hired and recently promoted workers, loosened vacation restrictions around the December holidays, and – a week before the vote – handed out bottles of bourbon.
The strategy worked as intended. Employees who had signed authorization cards began pulling back. One asked for his card back. Another told union representatives the extra money had changed his mind. On election day, the union lost 45 to 14.
The NLRB found that Brown-Forman had committed unfair labor practices under Section 8(a)(1) and (3) of the National Labor Relations Act by making, announcing, and implementing the wage increases, benefit changes, and bourbon gifts to discourage union membership. The Board set aside the election and ordered the company to recognize and bargain with the Teamsters, relying exclusively on the Cemex standard it had adopted in August 2023.
The Sixth Circuit agreed that the evidence of unfair labor practices was solid. The court found the timing, the internal emails, and the unprecedented nature of the compensation changes all pointed to a deliberate effort to undermine the organizing campaign. The well-timed benefits, the court observed, amounted to a velvet glove concealing coercion, interference, and discouragement.
But the court drew the line at the remedy. The Cemex standard had replaced the Gissel framework that had governed bargaining orders for more than 50 years. Under Gissel, the Board had to evaluate whether a fair rerun election was still possible before forcing an employer to bargain. Under Cemex, the Board could skip that analysis and default to a bargaining order whenever it determined that an employer's misconduct warranted setting aside an election.
The majority held that the Board created the Cemex standard not to resolve the specific dispute in front of it, but to deter future employer misconduct on a broader scale – a purpose that belongs in the formal rulemaking process, not in adjudication. The Board itself had acknowledged in the original Cemex decision that applying the new standard to that case produced no additional finding of a violation and no additional remedial obligation. In other words, the existing Gissel standard had already done the job. The new policy was aimed at changing the rules going forward, and the court concluded the Board needed to follow notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures to do that.
The dissenting judge pushed back sharply, arguing that the Board has developed nearly all of its policies through adjudication for decades and that the Cemex standard still requires a fact-intensive inquiry before a bargaining order can issue. The dissent warned that the ruling effectively rewards Brown-Forman for its campaign to subvert its workers' rights.
The case has been sent back to the NLRB, which must now reconsider the appropriate remedy consistent with the court's opinion. For HR professionals, the practical takeaway is twofold. The court made clear that conferring benefits timed to disrupt an organizing campaign remains a serious violation of federal labor law, regardless of how generous those benefits may be. At the same time, the path from an unfair labor practice finding to a forced bargaining order just got narrower – at least in the Sixth Circuit.
The 2-1 split and the dissent's vigorous objection suggest the question is far from settled. In the meantime, HR teams managing labor relations should understand that while the remedial calculus has shifted, the underlying rules about employer conduct during organizing campaigns have not.
