the brotherhood of locomotive engineers against the union pacific railroad is up for argument next award from the national railroad adjustment board organ rob really the b l e t has what boiled down to two problems with this work first is the jurisdictional problem the second has to do with arbitral bodies failure to abide by the plain text of the our l a and the due process clause of the constitution i want to address the jurisdictional piece first in union if you could use real english words it would help us non specialists i apologize your honor the united states supreme court held that the adjustment board must exercise the jurisdiction that congress ga here the adjustment board's jurisdiction is set out in the railway labor act of forty five u s c section one fifty three first paragraph h that part of the statute repeatedly uses the word jurisdiction and is totally clear that it is talking about the jurisdiction of the adjustment board and their congress gave the adjustment or jurisdiction for for disputes involving employees counsel them let me tell you what problem your argument is you agree that the board had jurisdiction to rule in the union's favor right correct your own jurisdiction means you to kotori competence if it could rule in the union honor is that the board had jurisdiction to determine mr griff's rights as an employee he was a dual status individual he was on leave from his position as an engineer this isn't disputed by the parties he was on leave that position as an engineer and he was a manager managers are excluded from the definition of employee under them are away again and again the award talks about management employees talks about the rights of management employees i understand how exercises of our work can exceed jurisdiction but where we don't line edit the decisions of the board in the name of something better jurisdiction that's right the holding the holding of the award twice uses the words management employees and makes it clear that the board is passing on the rights of management employees it's it's as if mr griffin makes it clear that the board has decided that the grievance the reason is role and maybe it is but that has nothing to do with jurisdiction with respect your honor the objection is about the board's jurisdiction  could imagine a situation where there was a dispute involving an employee which literally would be within the board's jurisdiction under the language of the statute but the board does not thereby get power to pass on everything simply involving an employee at the board cannot announce the rights of managers managers cannot come before the board mr griffith was only before the board as a locomotive engineer and in that sense the board should have ruled on his rights as a locomotive engineer instead of ruling on his rights as a manager at the port did side said he didn't have any because he was a managerial employee and the bottom line is that his claim for employee rights was tonight all we can go on is the arbitration award that we got from the adjustment board and threw out the opinion the adjustment board speaks of management employees and their rights so why does that make this board said was outside of its jurisdiction and ruling on your claim that he was entitled to benefits as an employee under the c p a if the board had addressed his rights as an employee it would have been forced to grapple with the discipline because the board chose to address him as a manager a person who cannot come before the board the board was able to sidestep the clearly a poli discipline he had to be classified first and fisher fell right sure your honor if i could briefly pose a hypothetical if mr griffin come before the board because he was a property holder and he had a property dispute with the railroad the end ramp would not have jurisdiction to rule on his rights as a property holder that has no jurisdiction over that question even though he is an employee and he might be in a dispute with  in the title twenty expose a case filed by somebody who says i'm an employee of the united states and i make the following claims and the judge says no you're not you're a private employee you are not an employee of the united states does the judge lose jurisdiction at that point i'm sorry i'm not that's of very well established issue in the answer is no similarly in order to have diversity controversy must be seventy five thousand or more exposed at the end of the case the judge says the plaintiff wins and he's entitled to fifty thousand dollars does the judge lose jurisdiction of course the answer is no right we could go through this i don't see why this is any different riff comes before the board and says i am a laborer who is entitle to the following rights of seniority as a locomotive engineer and the board says no you're not why does it cause the board to lose jurisdiction if the board had said simply no you're not you're a manager the correct course at that point would have been for the board to decline jurisdiction then you should answer all of my questions like the district judge should say it's only worth fifty thousand suit dismissed go to state court and resolve the merits there the federal the claim federal employees suit should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction but that's not what happens the adjustment board is different from an article three court i'll give you a bankruptcy court which is not an article three court the said as we have said too many times to want to repeat again the question is whether the arbitrator interpreted the contract if they did their interpretation is conclusive that's exactly why we're here today we have an arbitrator with the board who interpret d the contract and that interpretation is conclusive we don't ask whether the arbitrator was right or wrong or had factual legal errors and said we asked only did the arbitrator do what he was told to do and in this case that's to resolve the issue of whether mr griffith had a right to an investigation prior to losing the ability to exercise his seniority as an engineer under article nine we know that the arbitrator interpreted the contract how do we know he quoted it and then for the next four pages or so he talked about what the contract entitle mr griffith to or didn't entitle mr grech to talk about some precedent and talked about some practice between the parties at that point referee d interpreted article night to give mr griffith the ability to exercise his when you already at any time prior to his termination from an at will position the district court of course a for effort and that decision held that the board had explicitly interpreted the contract language here b l e t's arguments really break down because they are trying to fit this case into the very narrow aspects were a court could overturn an arbitration award and to do that you can tell that they are simply complaining about what the arbitrator awarded and i know that because if i look at what he is asking for it's asking for an investigatory hearing prior to the loss of already that's exactly what they asked and advocated for when they were before the arbitrator and the locks as the court pointed out with respect to jurisdiction the board does have jurisdiction it's simply found that as to the due process argument that the only counsel alluded to in his portion of the argument mr griffin was afforded due process to the extent they're complaining that union pacific violated mr he had notice of the hearing it was based on the evidence and he was he received an impartial decision the fact that the board's decision was not in line or what mr griffith asked for does not mean that he was deprived of due process makes to challenge the arbitration award is that the matter was not handled in the usual manner and the usual manner under the are all a is something that the parties are allowed to define under their collective bargaining agreement this court held that and rank case nothing in the collective bargaining agreement says we have to here have a hearing the arbitrator already said that and so we could not have deprived mr griffith of a hearing that he was not entitled to it wastes the court's time as well as that holy time in may if you look at b l e t's priest it doesn't address the deferential standard that has been addressed over and over again and had been as of even thirty years ago are they can be tricky questions we've litigated them before the b l t as a responsible way to get the last time we brought a true jurisdictional statement up before this court was a good ten years ago or a a true jurisdictional question before this  good ten years ago we succeeded in getting the arbitration set aside they're both before this court in the supreme court you know we're not interested in wasting our members money and we don't need the additional specter of sanctions to deter us from appeals that we would be prevalent we've had hundreds of opportunities to appeal arbitration awards and have not done so thank you very much they just take another