Aug 2 (Reuters) - A film producer has asked a U.S.

appeals court to rule that the National Labor Relations Board's

in-house proceedings violate the U.S. Constitution and that the

agency lacks the power to order employers to pay money damages

to workers who are illegally fired.

David Wulf, a one-time lawyer who has produced more than 40

movies since 2010, filed a brief with the Denver, Colorado-based

10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday arguing that a

pair of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings limiting the powers of

federal agencies apply to the NLRB.

The case will likely be among the first in a series of

pending legal challenges to the NLRB's structure filed by Elon

Musk's SpaceX, Starbucks ( SBUX ), Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Macy's and other employers

to yield a decision from an appeals court.

The board in March had ruled that two production companies

owned by Wulf illegally fired transportation workers who went on

strike while hauling production equipment for a pair of Hallmark

movies. The companies were ordered to reinstate the workers,

provide them with backpay, and reimburse them for any costs they

incurred as a result of being fired.

Wulf has denied wrongdoing and his lawyers at the Pacific

Legal Foundation, a libertarian group, urged the 10th Circuit on

Thursday to reverse the NLRB ruling on the merits. But they went

further, also asking the court to hold that the board has no

power to order compensatory damages in administrative cases.

The brief cites the Supreme Court's June ruling in Jarkesy

v. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which said the SEC's

practice of imposing monetary penalties in financial fraud cases

violated defendants' constitutional right to a jury trial.

Wulf's lawyers said the NLRB similarly has no power to impose

money damages, which it only began doing in 2022.

"Permitting NLRB to implement such a capacious reading of

its remedial power would transform the Board from agents tasked

with carrying out a declared congressional policy into

unaccountable 'ministers' who assume the role of lawmaker,"

Wulf's lawyers wrote.

An NLRB spokeswoman declined to comment.

The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit is also considering the

impact of the Jarkesy ruling on the NLRB in a case involving

Macy's building engineers who were locked out by the company

after going on strike.

Federal labor law permits the board to order employers to

reinstate workers who illegally lost their jobs, and also to

grant workers remedial damages to make them whole such as

backpay and lost benefits.

In the 2022 case Thryv Inc, the board's Democratic majority

said that many workers had been shortchanged by that practice

because people who lose their jobs often incur many related

expenses such as credit card fees, penalties for withdrawing

money from retirement accounts, and medical costs.

The board had applied Thryv in Wulf's case, ordering his

companies to make workers whole for "any direct or foreseeable

pecuniary harms" stemming from being fired.

In Thursday's brief, Wulf's lawyers said the board's attempt

to expand the remedies available to workers was illegal, and

that only courts can order the kind of compensatory damages

discussed in the Thryv ruling.

They also said that the Supreme Court's June ruling in Loper

Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which eliminated the deference

that courts owed to federal agencies in interpreting laws they

enforce, means that the 10th Circuit does not have to defer to

the NLRB's reading of federal labor law.

"Judges - not agencies - are the experts in the "field" of

legal interpretation, a field which is emphatically the province

and duty of the judicial department," Wulf's lawyers wrote.

The case is 3484 Inc v. NLRB, 10th U.S. Circuit Court of

Appeals, No. 24-9511.

For the companies: Oliver Dunford and Aditya Dynar of the

Pacific Legal Foundation

For the NLRB: Ruth Burdick

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(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York)