A Washington state bottling company that caused a political brewhaha all in an effort to avoid its failure to comply with a collective bargaining agreement involving Local 760 members finally lost its case after nearly six years of litigation and delays.

A federal appeals court last month upheld a December 2014 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that determined Local 760 members working at Noel Canning in Yakima, Wash. had a bargaining agreement with the company since 2010. That NLRB ruling was the same as one made by a different agency panel in 2012.

The case blew up after Noel Canning lost in front of the NLRB four years ago. The company objected to the agency’s decision, saying it was made by members appointed by President Obama during a congressional recess. It argued the appointments were unlawful because they were made without Senate approval, which is regular protocol.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 2014 that the appointments were unlawful. As The New Yorker wrote about the case, “Noel Canning is peculiar in that it drew all the Justices, not just the self-styled originalists, into a historical debate over the phrasing, purpose, and application of the Constitution’s recess-appointments clause in the early republic and since.”

But a newly constituted NLRB panel later also ruled against Noel Canning. And it was the D.C. Circuit Court that affirmed that decision in May.

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