A federal appeals court has blocked Pace University’s attempt to limit the size of the bargaining unit for adjunct professors, who are locked in a longstanding battle to negotiate a contract.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in an opinion issued last week, agreed with the National Labor Relations Board that the union for part-time faculty members at Pace should include every instructor with a class load of at least three credit hours.

Pace had asked the court for membership requirements that would have kept adjuncts out of the union during their first two years at the institution. The university has said that its adjunct professors voted to unionize in 2004 with the restriction in place, and so the bargaining unit should be formed in the same way.

The appeals-court ruling said that Pace had “failed to make known its objections to the scope of the proposed bargaining unit when it had reason, ability, and opportunity to do so” after earlier rulings by the National Labor Relations Board, and so it couldn’t object now.

About 1,000 adjunct faculty members at the institution are represented by the Union of Adjunct Faculty at Pace, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. —Audrey Williams June