April 24 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday

rejected Starbucks' ( SBUX ) claims that an election won by a

union at the coffee company's flagship Seattle store was invalid

because it was held via mail ballot during the COVID-19

pandemic.

A three-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld

a National Labor Relations Board decision that said the company,

which is facing a nationwide union organizing campaign, must

recognize and bargain with the store's union, which represents

nearly 100 workers.

Starbucks ( SBUX ) claimed that a labor board official who ordered

the mail-ballot election in March 2022 used the wrong data to

determine that an in-person election was unsafe because there

was an upward trend in COVID cases in the Seattle area at the

time. Workers at the store voted 38-27 to unionize.

The 9th Circuit on Wednesday disagreed, finding that the

official correctly applied a test the board adopted in 2020 for

determining when a mail-ballot election was appropriate because

of the pandemic.

Starbucks ( SBUX ) and Workers United, the union organizing the

company's stores, did not immediately respond to requests for

comment.

During the pandemic, most union elections were held via mail

ballot, and the labor board is still ordering elections by mail

in some cases.

Business groups and Republican lawmakers have criticized the

labor board for continuing to shun in-person elections even as

the pandemic subsided. They claim mail-ballot elections lower

voter participation and jeopardize workers' rights to choose

whether to be represented by a union.

In a 2020 decision involving hospital operator Aspirus, the

labor board said that, among other factors, regional directors

should look at the 14-day trend in local COVID cases in deciding

how to administer a union election.

In Wednesday's case, Starbucks ( SBUX ) claimed that meant looking at

the average rate of new cases each day over a 14-day period, and

not the number of cases reported 14 days apart as the regional

director had done.

But the 9th Circuit in its decision noted that the labor

board had not defined what a 14-day trend was or laid out a

specific method for calculating it.

"Even if we credit Starbucks's ( SBUX ) approach ... our standard of

review does not permit us to displace the NLRB's choice between

two fairly conflicting views," Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown

wrote for the court.

Workers at more than 420 of Starbucks' ( SBUX ) 9,000 U.S. stores

have voted to unionize since 2021. The 9th Circuit case is one

of several involving the organizing campaign to reach federal

appeals courts.