After decades of campus debate, the future of the graduate student union movement at Yale now rests on a question of legal interpretation: Does a recent, highly controversial development in national labor law apply to the University?

Graduate student union Local 33 is anxiously awaiting an answer to that question. After weeks of contentious labor hearings last October, the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board has yet to reach a verdict on whether a polarizing labor board decision from 2011 allows Local 33 to hold separate union elections in nine of Yale’s academic departments.

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William Gould, a former chairman of the NLRB, said the Yale-Local 33 case is unique in two respects: It is the first time that Specialty Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center of Mobile has been applied to academia and the only occasion that the decision has been used to argue for multiple micro-units at once.

“This is a very difficult case,” said Gould, who has reviewed the two briefs. “Both sides are represented by experienced labor law council, and the briefs reflect that. I don’t know how I would resolve it.”