Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-05-01027/USCOURTS-caDC-05-01027-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Fashion Valley Mall, LLC.
Respondent
National Labor Relations Board
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 13, 2005 Decided May 9, 2008

No. 04-1411

FASHION VALLEY MALL, LLC.,

PETITIONER

v.

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD,

RESPONDENT

GRAPHIC COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE, INTERNATIONAL

BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, LOCAL 432(M)

INTERVENOR

Consolidated with

05-1027 & 05-1039

On Petition for Review and Application and CrossApplication for Enforcement of an Order of the

National Labor Relations Board

William M. Lines argued the cause for petitioner Fashion

Valley Mall, LLC. With him on the briefs was Theodore R.

Scott.

Anne Marie Lofaso, Attorney, National Labor Relations

Board, argued the cause for respondent. With her on the brief

USCA Case #05-1027 Document #1115488 Filed: 05/09/2008 Page 1 of 5
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were Arthur F. Rosenfeld, Acting General Counsel, Margery E.

Lieber, Acting Associate General Counsel, Aileen A. Armstrong,

Deputy Associate General Counsel, and David S. Habenstreit,

Supervisory Attorney.

David A. Rosenfeld and Richard D. Prochazka entered

appearances on behalf of intervenor Graphic Communications

Conference, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local

432(M) in support of respondent.

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, GINSBURG, Circuit Judge,

and WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GINSBURG.

GINSBURG,Circuit Judge: Fashion Valley owns a shopping

mall in San Diego, California. It allows individuals and

organizations to engage in expressive activities on its premises

if they get a permit; in order to get a permit, an applicant must

promise not to urge consumers to boycott any of the mall’s

tenants. The NLRB concluded this policy violated the right to

free speech guaranteed by the Constitution of California and

therefore held it was an unfair labor practice; Fashion Valley

petitioned this court for review. We agreed that “whether

Fashion Valley violated the [National Labor Relations] Act

depends upon whether it had the right, under California law, to

maintain and enforce its anti-boycott rule.” 451 F.3d 241, 242

(2006). Accordingly, we certified that question to the Supreme

Court of California, which held Fashion Valley’s policy violated

the right to free speech guaranteed by the Constitution of

California, 172 P.3d 742 (2007), and later denied Fashion

Valley’s petition for rehearing. 

Fashion Valley now claims the interpretation of the

Constitution of California requiring it to allow protesters on its

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premises to urge a boycott of its tenants’ stores violates its rights

under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution

of the United States. It concedes, however, that it did not raise

its constitutional argument until it petitioned the Supreme Court

of California for rehearing. The Board argues the argument is

forfeit because Fashion Valley did not raise it during the agency

proceeding. 

Whether Fashion Valley was required to raise its argument

before the Board is not clear. “[T]here is [no] bright-line rule

allowing litigants to bypass administrative [process] simply

because one or all of their claims are constitutional in nature,”

Marine Mammal Conservancy, Inc. v. Dep’t of Agric., 134 F.3d

409, 413 (D.C. Cir. 1998), but we have stated we may excuse a

failure to exhaust administrative remedies when exhaustion

would be “futile” because a claim involves “the constitutionality

of a [federal] statutory provision” and would therefore be

“beyond [the agency’s] competence to decide.” Ryan v.

Bentsen, 12 F.3d 245, 247 (D.C. Cir. 1993). The Board has

never said it lacks jurisdiction to decide whether a state law is

constitutional, cf. Univ. of Great Falls, 331 NLRB No. 188, at

*2 (2000) (holding it beyond Board’s authority to pass upon

constitutionality of a federal statute), vacated on other grounds,

278 F.3d 1335 (D.C. Cir. 2002), but clearly it has been

disinclined to do so. Waremart Foods, 337 NLRB 289, 289

(2001) (“[W]e decline the Respondent’s invitation to

independently evaluate the constitutionality of the State law”),

vacated on other grounds, 354 F.3d 870 (D.C. Cir. 2004);

Varied Enters., 240 NLRB 126, 132 (1979) (“It is the general

rule of law that a state statute is presumed to be constitutional

until it is repealed by the legislature, or until its nullity is

declared by a court of competent jurisdiction”). 

We need not wade into such murky waters in this case: We

have no doubt Fashion Valley forfeited its constitutional

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argument because it did not raise that argument in its petition for

review by this court. See, e.g., Nat’l Steel & Shipbuilding Co.

v. NLRB, 156 F.3d 1268, 1273 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (“[Petitioner]

failed in its opening brief to this court to contest the Board’s

finding .... Consequently, that claim is waived”). Fashion

Valley could and should have argued that if the Board’s

understanding of California’s constitutional guarantee of free

speech was correct, then that free speech provision, as applied,

violated the Constitution of the United States. Having that

argument before us would have facilitated our decision to certify

the question of state law to the Supreme Court of California.

See Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 79

(1997) (noting that certification is especially appropriate “when

a federal court is asked to invalidate a State’s law” because the

federal court “risks friction-generating error”). More important,

with that argument a part of the case, the Supreme Court of

California might have made a special effort to construe the state

constitution so as to avoid any potential conflict with federal

constitutional law.

Fashion Valley resists this conclusion, contending “it would

have been impossible for [it] to have presented, or for the Board

to have resolved, U.S. Constitutional issues created by a

decision which had not yet been issued.” But the decision of the

Supreme Court of California did not inject a new constitutional

issue into the case. The Board’s understanding of California law

had been part of this case from the time the Board’s General

Counsel filed the first brief before the Board; the Supreme Court

of California merely confirmed that the interpretation of

California law long followed by the Board was correct. See,

e.g., Glendale Assocs., 335 NLRB 27 (2001), enf’d, 347 F.3d

1145 (9th Cir. 2003); see also Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping

Ctr., 592 P.2d 341 (Cal. 1979), aff’d, 447 U.S. 74 (1980).

Fashion Valley had no reason to wait until the Supreme Court of

California rendered its decision to pursue its constitutional

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claim.

Therefore, without deciding whether Fashion Valley was

required to raise its constitutional argument before the Board in

the first instance, we hold the argument is forfeit because it was

not timely raised before this court. Fashion Valley’s petition for

review is accordingly denied and the Board’s cross-application

for enforcement is granted.

So ordered.

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