Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-11-01294/USCOURTS-caDC-11-01294-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
Amicus Curiae for Respondent
DIRECTV, Inc.
Respondent
MasTec Advanced Technologies
Respondent
National Labor Relations Board
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 8, 2015 Decided September 16, 2016

No. 11-1273

DIRECTV, INC.,

PETITIONER

v.

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD,

RESPONDENT

Consolidated with 11-1274, 11-1294

On Petitions for Review and Cross-Application for 

Enforcement

of an Order of the National Labor Relations Board

Gavin S. Appleby argued the cause for petitioner MasTec 

Advanced Technologies. With him on the briefs was 

Michelle E. Shivers.

Jonathan C. Fritts argued the cause for petitioner 

DIRECTV, LLC. With him on the briefs were Charles I. 

Cohen and David R. Broderdorf.

Douglas E. Callahan, Attorney, National Labor Relations 

Board, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 1 of 68
2

brief were John H. Ferguson, Associate General Counsel, 

Linda Dreeben, Deputy Associate General Counsel, and Julie 

B. Broido, Supervisory Attorney. Kira D. Vol, Attorney, 

entered an appearance.

Matthew J. Ginsburg argued the cause for amicus curiae 

American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial 

Organizations in support of respondent. With him on the 

brief were Lynn K. Rhinehart and James B. Coppess.

Before: ROGERS, BROWN and SRINIVASAN, Circuit 

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SRINIVASAN.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge BROWN.

SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judge: The National Labor 

Relations Act protects employees’ right to engage in 

concerted activities. That right encompasses protesting an 

employer’s actions or policies through an appeal to the public 

for support. But while the Act protects employees’ right to 

engage in such third-party appeals, the Act also recognizes the 

prerogative of employers to discharge employees “for cause.” 

Those two principles can come into tension. That can happen, 

for instance, when employees publicly criticize their company 

in an attempt to draw support in an ongoing labor dispute, and 

the company then fires the employees for disloyalty.

The National Labor Relations Board bears responsibility 

for balancing the right of employees to engage in concerted 

activity against the right of employers to discharge disloyal 

workers. Under the Board’s approach, an appeal to third 

parties in connection with an employment-related dispute can 

qualify as protected concerted activity even if the appeal is 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 2 of 68
3

disloyal and disparaging of the employer in some measure. 

But if the employees’ appeal rises to the level of flagrant 

disloyalty, wholly incommensurate with any employmentrelated grievance, or if the employees make maliciously 

untrue statements about their employer, their conduct is no 

longer protected and their employer can discharge them for 

cause.

In this case, a group of employees, frustrated by a new 

pay policy at work and unable to make headway in direct 

discussions with their employer, aired their grievances

publicly in an interview with a reporter for a local television 

news station. The company responded by firing the 

employees. The Board found that the company’s termination 

of the employees was an unfair labor practice. In the Board’s 

view, the employees’ participation in the interview in 

furtherance of their employment-related grievances was 

protected concerted activity, and their statements were neither 

so disloyal nor so maliciously untrue as to fall outside the 

Act’s protection. The Board therefore ordered the employees’ 

reinstatement. 

The employer, together with another company involved 

in the employees’ termination, seeks review of the Board’s 

decision. In the companies’ view, the employees’ statements 

in the television interview did not fall within the bounds of 

protected concerted activity because the statements were both 

maliciously untrue and flagrantly disloyal, wholly out of step 

with the employees’ objections to the pay policy. The 

question for this court is not where we think the line between 

protected and unprotected activity should be drawn. Instead, 

we must determine whether the Board’s finding that the 

employees’ third-party appeal falls on the protected side of 

the line is in accordance with the law and supported by 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 3 of 68
4

substantial evidence. We answer those questions in the 

affirmative and thus enforce the Board’s order.

I.

A.

This case involves two companies, DirecTV, which sells 

satellite television services to consumers, and MasTec, one of 

DirecTV’s contractors. DirectTV relies on contractors such 

as MasTec to install satellite television receivers in 

subscribers’ homes. 

The events in question began to unfold in early 2006. At 

the time, DirecTV wanted each of its television receivers 

connected to a working (landline) phone line in customers’ 

homes. A phone connection enabled customers to take 

advantage of certain features such as ordering pay-per-view 

movies using a remote control (without needing to make a 

phone call), downloading software upgrades, and viewing 

phone caller-ID on their television screens. A phone 

connection also benefitted DirecTV by allowing the company 

to track customers’ viewing habits and thus to make more 

effective programming decisions. 

In furtherance of DirecTV’s aim to connect its receivers 

to a phone line, the company required its contractors to 

include connecting (and installing if necessary) a phone line 

as part of the standard receiver installation package, at no 

additional charge. DirecTV tracked the number of receivers 

each contractor successfully connected to phone lines.

In January 2006, MasTec’s Orlando, Florida, office had 

the lowest connection rate of any DirecTV contractor 

nationwide. Concerned with MasTec’s poor performance, 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 4 of 68
5

DirecTV took action: it began charging MasTec $5 for each 

receiver installed without a connection to a phone line, and it 

informed MasTec that it would continue to do so as long as 

MasTec’s connection rate remained below 50%. MasTec 

passed along the monetary incentive to its installation 

technicians in the form of a new pay policy. First, technicians 

generally would be paid $2 less for each receiver they

installed, but would receive an additional $3.35 if they 

connected the receiver to a phone line. Second, technicians 

who connected receivers to phone lines in fewer than half of 

their installations in a thirty-day period would be “backcharged” $5 for each unconnected receiver.

Although DirecTV wanted its receivers connected to 

phone lines, a phone connection was unnecessary for a 

receiver to work: it is undisputed that customers could 

receive the full range of television programming through a 

receiver regardless of any connection to a phone line. In the 

absence of a phone connection, however, DirecTV could not 

track customers’ viewing preferences, and customers could 

not take advantage of the aforementioned features such as

ordering pay-per-view movies through their remote control. 

Still, many customers resisted making a phone 

connection. Some customers relied exclusively on cellular 

phone service and thus had no landline phone; others sought 

to maintain privacy by preventing DirecTV from knowing 

about their viewing preferences; and others wished to avoid 

giving their children ready access to pay-per-view movies. In 

addition, some customers disliked the sight of a phone cord 

running along the wall or across a room to connect the 

receiver to a phone line. For those customers, MasTec 

offered two premium installation options, under which, for an 

additional charge of roughly $50, there would be no visible 

cord.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 5 of 68
6

Whatever the customers’ reasons for resisting a phone 

connection, MasTec technicians—as evidenced by their low 

connection rate—struggled to connect receivers to phone 

lines. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the technicians strongly 

disfavored MasTec’s new pay policy. In meetings with 

management, technicians complained about the fairness of the 

policy and the effect on their compensation.

Both MasTec and DirecTV responded to the technicians’ 

concerns with advice for connecting more receivers. Some of 

the advice consisted of run-of-the-mill sales tactics such as 

persuading customers of the benefits of a phone connection. 

Some of the advice plainly was not meant to be taken literally, 

such as when a MasTec manager jokingly told technicians 

they should tell customers the DirecTV system would “blow 

up” without a phone connection. 

But some of the advice was understood by technicians to 

suggest that they mislead or lie to customers about the 

necessity of a phone connection to receive television 

programming. For instance, the same MasTec manager who 

joked that technicians should tell customers the system would 

“blow up” without a phone connection also said that 

technicians should tell customers “whatever you have to tell 

them” and “whatever it takes” to gain approval to connect a 

phone line. MasTec supervisors also instructed technicians 

simply to connect a phone line without notifying customers. 

At least one supervisor said that technicians should advise 

customers that a receiver would not work without a phone 

connection. MasTec also showed technicians a video in 

which two DirecTV officials recommended telling customers 

that the phone line was a “mandatory part of the installation” 

and was “need[ed] . . . for the equipment to function

correctly.” See MasTec Advanced Techs., 357 NLRB 103, 

104 (2011); ALJ Op. 7-9 (J.A. 7-9); Training Video Tr. 2

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 6 of 68
7

(J.A. 431). The officials further suggested that technicians 

connect a phone line without telling the customer they were 

doing so. 

In the face of that advice, technicians continued to voice 

their concerns and frustration. MasTec refused to change the 

pay policy. And neither company rescinded or modified its 

advice that technicians should do “whatever it takes” to make 

phone connections. 

When the technicians received their first paychecks under 

the new pay policy, they revolted. They protested in the 

MasTec parking lot for two days, demanding more 

transparency and an end to the policy. In response, MasTec 

management offered to review the data affecting pay and to 

help technicians keep track of their connection rate during the 

month. But MasTec still refused to change the policy.

Getting nowhere with protests and direct talks with their 

employer, a group of MasTec technicians contacted a local 

television news station, which agreed to air a story. The 

technicians arrived at the station in their DirecTV vans and 

wearing DirecTV uniforms. A reporter from the station 

interviewed the technicians as a group. The station showed 

the resulting interview segment several times on the local 

news. 

The segment addressed the technicians’ grievances 

concerning the pay policy and their belief that they were

being told to lie to customers; it also conveyed the reporter’s 

understanding that the emphasis on a phone connection could 

ultimately cost customers money (in the form of the 

additional charge for a premium installation under which 

there would be no visible phone cord). The news story 

proceeded as follows (and, as edited by the news station, 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 7 of 68
8

contained statements from four technicians, reproduced in 

italics for demarcation).

News Anchor: Yeah . . . technicians who 

have installed hundreds of DirecTV satellite 

systems across Central Florida . . . they’re 

talking about a company policy that charges 

you for something you may not ever use. 

And as problem solver Nancy Alvarez 

found, if you don’t pay for it, the workers

do.

Reporter Alvarez: They arrived at our Local 

6 studios in droves. DirecTV trucks packed 

the parking lot and inside the technicians 

spoke their minds. (Accompanying video 

showed more than 16 DirecTV vans in the 

parking lot followed by a shot panning a 

group of technicians wearing shirts bearing 

the DirecTV logo.)

(The scene shifts to a room where more than 

20 technicians were seated, facing Alvarez.)

Technician Lee Selby: We’re just asking to 

be treated fairly.

Alvarez: These men have installed hundreds 

of DirecTV systems in homes across Central 

Florida but now they admit they’ve lied to 

customers along the way.

Technician Hugh Fowler: If we don’t lie to 

the customers, we get back charged for it. 

And you can’t make money.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 8 of 68
9

Alvarez: We’ll explain the lies later but first 

the truth. Phone lines are not necessary for a 

DirecTV system; having them only 

enhances the service allowing customers to 

order movies through a remote control 

instead of through the phone or over the 

internet.

Technician Frank Martinez: It’s more of 

a convenience than anything else. . . .

Alvarez: But every phone line connected to 

a receiver means more money for DirecTV 

and MasTec, the contractor these men work 

for. So the techs say their supervisors have 

been putting pressure on them. Deducting 

five bucks from their paychecks for every 

DirecTV receiver that’s not connected to a 

phone line.

Martinez: We go to a home that . . . needs 

three . . . three receivers that’s . . . fifteen 

dollars.

Alvarez: Throw in dozens of homes every 

week and the losses are adding up fast.

Alvarez (questioning a room full of 

technicians): How many of you here by a 

show of hands have had $200 taken out of 

your paycheck? (Most technicians raise 

hands.)

Martinez: More.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 9 of 68
10

Alvarez: Want to avoid a deduction on your 

paycheck? Well, according to this group, 

supervisors have ordered them to do or say 

whatever it takes. 

Martinez: Tell the customer whatever you 

have to tell them. Tell them if these phone 

lines are not connected the receiver will 

blow up.

Alvarez: You’ve been told to tell customers 

that . . .

Martinez: We’ve been told to say that. 

Whatever it takes to get that phone line into 

that receiver.

Alvarez (reporting): The lie could cost 

customers big money . . . the fee to have a 

phone line installed could be as high as 

$52.00 per room . . . want a wireless phone 

jack? That will cost you another 50 bucks.

(Alvarez shown attempting unsuccessfully 

to obtain comment from MasTec at its 

offices.)

Alvarez (reporting): But statements from 

their corporate office and from DirecTV 

make it clear the policy of deducting money 

from employees’ paychecks will continue. 

A DirecTV spokesman said techs who don’t 

hook up phone lines are quote ‘denying 

customers the full benefit and function of 

their DirecTV system.’ These men disagree 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 10 of 68
11

and say the policy has done nothing but 

create an environment where lying to 

customers is part of the job.

Alvarez (interviewing): It’s either lie or lose 

money.

Technician Sebastian Eriste: We don’t have 

a choice.

Alvarez (reporting): Now . . . during our 

investigation, MasTec decided to reimburse 

money to some techs who had met a certain 

quota but the policy continues and one 

reason could be that DirecTV does keep 

track of their customers’ viewing habits 

through those phone lines. Now just last 

year, DirecTV paid out a $5 million 

settlement with Florida and 21 other states 

for deceptive practices and now, because of 

our story, the attorney general’s office is 

looking into this newest issue so we’ll, of 

course, keep you posted.

News Anchor: You think they would have 

learned the first time.

Alvarez: You think so. We’ll see what 

happens.

News Anchor: Thank you, Nancy.

MasTec, 357 NLRB at 104-06; Broadcast Tr. (J.A. 434-36). 

Neither Selby nor Martinez is one of the alleged subjects of 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 11 of 68
12

discrimination in this case, as both men resigned before the 

terminations at issue here.

When the segment aired, MasTec informed its contacts at 

DirecTV. DirecTV, in turn, told MasTec it did not want the 

technicians in the broadcast representing DirecTV in 

customers’ homes. MasTec then fired nearly all of the 

technicians who participated in the broadcast, including those

who did not speak on air.

B.

In an unfair labor practice proceeding against MasTec 

and DirecTV, the companies initially prevailed before an 

administrative law judge (ALJ). The ALJ first found that the 

technicians’ appeal to the public through the news story 

related to an ongoing labor dispute with their employer, as 

was necessary for their conduct to qualify as protected 

concerted activity. The ALJ then turned to the “more difficult 

issue” of whether the technicians’ statements in the segment 

nonetheless fell outside the Act’s protection because they 

were “so disloyal, disparaging and malicious as to be 

unprotected.” ALJ Op. 18 (J.A. 18). The ALJ concluded that 

the technicians’ statements met that standard and thus were 

unprotected.

The Board disagreed with the ALJ. The Board explained 

that, under its decisions, “employee communications to third 

parties in an effort to obtain their support are protected 

where” (i) “the communication indicate[s] it is related to an 

ongoing dispute” and (ii) it “is not so disloyal, reckless or

maliciously untrue as to lose the Act’s protection.” MasTec, 

357 NLRB at 107. As to the first prong, the Board agreed 

with the ALJ “that the employee communications here were 

clearly related to their pay dispute.” Id. As to the second 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 12 of 68
13

prong, the Board found that the ALJ “clearly erred in finding 

that the employee communications and/or participation in the 

Channel 6 newscast were either maliciously untrue or so 

disloyal and reckless as to warrant removal of the Act’s 

protection.” Id. 

With regard to whether the technicians’ statements were 

“maliciously untrue,” the Board determined “that almost all of 

the statements . . . were truthful representations of what the 

[companies] told them to do,” and any “arguable departures 

from the truth were no more than good-faith misstatements or 

incomplete statements, not malicious falsehoods.” Id. at 107-

08. With regard to whether the statements amounted to 

“unprotected disloyalty or reckless disparagement,” the Board 

explained that “it will not find a public statement unprotected 

unless it is flagrantly disloyal, wholly incommensurate with 

any grievances which [the employees] might have.” Id. 

(quoting Five Star Transp., Inc., 349 NLRB 42, 45 (2007)). 

Here, the Board found, the technicians’ statements did not 

meet that standard. As a result, the Board held that the 

companies had committed an unfair labor practice by firing 

the technicians for participating in the interview.

The companies filed petitions for review in this court, 

and the Board filed a cross-application for enforcement. See 

29 U.S.C. § 160(e), (f). The Board also moved for summary 

enforcement of the portions of its order relating to issues that 

are unchallenged here—threats made by MasTec to its 

employees in violation of the Act and two of MasTec’s 

workplace policies found to violate the Act. See Board Br. 

27-28. Because MasTec brings no challenge to those portions 

of the order, we grant the Board’s request for summary 

enforcement as to those issues. See Allied Mech. Servs., Inc. 

v. NLRB, 668 F.3d 758, 765 (D.C. Cir. 2012).

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 13 of 68
14

II.

This court “must uphold the judgment of the Board 

unless, upon reviewing the record as a whole, we conclude 

that the Board’s findings are not supported by substantial 

evidence, or that the Board acted arbitrarily or otherwise erred 

in applying established law to the facts of the case.” Tenneco 

Auto., Inc. v. NLRB, 716 F.3d 640, 646-47 (D.C. Cir. 2013) 

(quoting Wayneview Care Ctr. v. NLRB, 664 F.3d 341, 348 

(D.C. Cir. 2011)). “Determining whether activity is concerted 

and protected within the meaning of Section 7 [of the Act] is a 

task that implicates the Board’s expertise in labor relations,” 

so the “Board’s determination that an employee has engaged 

in protected concerted activity is entitled to considerable 

deference if it is reasonable.” Citizens Inv. Servs. Corp. v. 

NLRB, 430 F.3d 1195, 1198 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (quoting NLRB 

v. City Disposal Sys., Inc., 465 U.S. 822, 829 (1984)). Even 

“as to matters not requiring [the Board’s] expertise,” we may 

not “displace the Board’s choice between two fairly 

conflicting views,” regardless of whether we “would 

justifiably have made a different choice had the matter been 

before” us in the first instance. Universal Camera Corp. v. 

NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 488 (1951). 

Applying those deferential standards here, we uphold the 

Board’s decision. The Board held that the technicians’ 

participation in the news segment was protected concerted 

activity relating to their ongoing dispute about the new pay 

policy. In the Board’s view, the technicians’ statements in the 

interview were neither so disloyal and incommensurate with 

their labor grievances, nor so maliciously untrue, as to fall 

outside the Act’s protection. The companies do not dispute 

the correctness of the legal standards applied by the Board. 

They instead argue that the Board applied those standards in a 

manner contrary to law or reached conclusions unsupported 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 14 of 68
15

by substantial evidence. We conclude that the Board acted 

within its discretion.

A.

The National Labor Relations Act protects the right of 

employees to “engage in . . . concerted activities for the 

purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or 

protection.” 29 U.S.C. § 157. That protection encompasses 

efforts by employees “to improve terms and conditions of 

employment” through appeals to third parties standing 

“outside the immediate employee-employer relationship.” 

Eastex, Inc. v NLRB, 437 U.S. 556, 565 (1978). For instance, 

this court has recognized the right of employees to support a 

consumer boycott of their employer’s products in connection 

with a labor dispute (as long as they do not go beyond the 

dispute to disparage the employer’s product itself). George A. 

Hormel & Co. v. NLRB, 962 F.2d 1061, 1064 (D.C. Cir. 

1992). Employees may not be discharged for engaging in 

such protected conduct. Id.; see 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1).

While the Act protects the right of employees to engage 

in third-party appeals, the Act also establishes that an 

employer may not be required to reinstate an employee who 

has been “suspended or discharged for cause.” 29 U.S.C. 

§ 160(c). And “[t]here is no more elemental cause for 

discharge of an employee than disloyalty to his employer.” 

NLRB v. Local Union No. 1229, Int’l Bhd. of Elec. Workers, 

346 U.S. 464, 472 (1953) (Jefferson Standard). 

Of course, some third-party appeals by employees, even 

in the context of a labor dispute, could fairly be considered 

disloyal. An “employee who supports a boycott of his 

employer’s product,” for instance, “violates his duty of 

loyalty to the employer.” Hormel, 962 F.2d at 1064. 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 15 of 68
16

Nonetheless, we have held that an employee has a protected 

entitlement to support a boycott of his employer’s product if it 

arises in connection with an ongoing employment dispute. Id. 

at 1065.

The Act therefore recognizes two potentially competing 

interests. On one hand, the Act gives an employee a protected 

right to engage in (and thus to avoid discharge for engaging 

in) third-party appeals in furtherance of an employment 

grievance, even if the employee’s conduct amounts to 

disloyalty. On the other hand, the Act recognizes an 

employer’s latitude to discharge an employee for cause, 

including for disloyalty. So where is the line between 

protected third-party appeals, for which employees are 

immune from discharge for disloyalty, and unprotected thirdparty appeals, for which employees are subject to discharge 

for disloyalty?

The Supreme Court’s decision in Jefferson Standard, 346 

U.S. 464, gives some guidance. The case arose out of a 

television station’s contract dispute with its employees. The 

principal point of disagreement concerned the union’s efforts 

to secure renewal of a contract provision subjecting employee 

discharges to arbitration. Id. at 467. Employees picketed 

outside the station’s offices, displaying placards and 

distributing handbills criticizing the station for refusing to 

renew the arbitration provision. The employer took no 

exception to any of that conduct. Id. at 467. 

About a month and a half into the dispute, however, a 

group of employees began distributing a new handbill. 

Unlike the original handbills, the new handbill “made no 

reference to the union, to a labor controversy or to collective 

bargaining.” Id. at 468. It instead criticized the company’s 

product and business policies in the form of “a vitriolic attack 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 16 of 68
17

on the quality of the company’s television broadcasts.” Id. 

The station terminated the technicians associated with the new 

handbill, and the Board sustained the company’s action.

The Supreme Court upheld the Board’s decision. The 

Court emphasized that the new handbill “related itself to no 

labor practice of the company,” and “made no reference to 

wages, hours or working conditions.” Id. at 476. “The attack 

asked for no public sympathy or support,” and the “policies 

attacked were those of finance and public relations for which 

management, not technicians, must be responsible.” Id. In 

those circumstances, the Court explained, the “fortuity of the 

coexistence of a labor dispute affords these technicians no 

substantial defense.” Id. That was because the new handbill 

“omitted all reference to,” and “had no discernible relation 

to,” the ongoing labor controversy. Id. Rather, the handbill 

simply made “a sharp, public, disparaging attack upon the 

quality of the company’s product and its business policies, in 

a manner reasonably calculated to harm the company’s 

reputation and reduce its income.” Id. at 471. In that context, 

the handbill amounted to “a demonstration of such

detrimental disloyalty as to provide ‘cause’” for the 

employees’ discharge. Id. at 472.

In the years since Jefferson Standard, the Board has 

formulated a two-prong test for assessing whether employees’ 

third-party appeals constitute protected concerted activity or 

instead amount to “such detrimental disloyalty” as to permit 

the employees’ termination for cause. Under the Board’s test, 

“employee communications to third parties in an effort to 

obtain their support are protected where [i] the 

communication indicate[s] it is related to an ongoing dispute 

between the employees and the employers and [ii] the 

communication is not so disloyal, reckless or maliciously 

untrue as to lose the Act’s protection.” American Golf Corp.,

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 17 of 68
18

330 NLRB 1238, 1240 (2000) (Mountain Shadows Golf); see

Emarco, Inc., 284 NLRB 832, 833 (1987). This court has 

upheld the Mountain Shadows Golf test as “accurately 

reflect[ing] the holding in Jefferson Standard.” Endicott 

Interconnect Technologies, Inc. v. NLRB, 453 F.3d 532, 537 

(D.C. Cir. 2006).

The first prong of the test—whether “the communication 

indicate[s] it is related to an ongoing dispute between the 

employees and the employers”—focuses on whether it would 

be apparent to the target audience that the communication 

arises out of an ongoing labor dispute. Mountain Shadows

Golf, 330 NLRB at 1240. “[T]hird parties who receive 

appeals for support in a labor dispute will filter the 

information critically so long as they are aware it is generated 

out of that context.” Sierra Publ’g Co. v. NLRB, 889 F.2d 

210, 217 (9th Cir. 1989). In Jefferson Standard, the handbill 

in question fell outside the Act’s protection because it simply 

attacked the quality of the company’s product without 

indicating any connection to the ongoing labor controversy.

In this case, by contrast, there is no dispute that the 

technicians’ statements in the interview segment indicated a 

relationship “to an ongoing dispute between the employees 

and the employers,” satisfying the first prong of the Mountain 

Shadows Golf test. 330 NLRB at 1240. The companies thus 

do not challenge the Board’s finding “that the employee 

communications here were clearly related to their pay 

dispute.” MasTec, 357 NLRB at 107.

 

The issue in this case solely concerns the second prong of

the Mountain Shadows Golf test: whether the employees’ 

statements in the interview were “so disloyal, reckless or 

maliciously untrue as to lose the Act’s protection.” 330 

NLRB at 1240. The second prong does independent work, in 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 18 of 68
19

that an employee’s third-party appeal, to be protected, not 

only must relate to an ongoing labor dispute (the first prong) 

but also cannot be “so disloyal, reckless, or maliciously 

untrue” as to fall outside the Act’s protections (the second 

prong). Id. Jefferson Standard had no occasion to address 

the latter issue because the employees’ disparaging 

communication giving rise to their discharge in that case 

“omitted all reference to” the ongoing labor dispute—it thus 

failed at what would become the first step of the Mountain 

Shadows Golf test. 346 U.S. at 476.

Our dissenting colleague believes that Jefferson Standard

in fact engaged with what would become the second step of 

that test because the Court, in the penultimate sentence of its 

opinion, said: “Even if the [employees’] attack were to be 

treated, as the Board has not treated it, as a concerted activity 

wholly or partly within the scope of those mentioned in § 7 

[of the Act], the means used by the technicians in conducting 

the act have deprived the attackers of the protections of that 

section, when read in the light and context of the purpose of 

the Act.” Id. at 477-78. We read that sentence to pertain to 

the first-step inquiry, not the second step. Specifically, the 

Court there confirmed that, even if the Board had found the

employees’ handbill to be protected activity connected to the 

ongoing labor dispute, the Court would have disagreed

because the “means used by the technicians” in the handbill 

had omitted any reference to—and had made no purported 

connection to—that dispute (a fact emphasized by the Court 

throughout its opinion, see id. at 468, 472, 476-77). And 

because a third-party appeal must indicate a connection to an 

ongoing labor dispute in order to satisfy the first step (mere 

contemporaneousness with a dispute is not itself enough), see 

Mountain Shadows, 330 NLRB at 1240, the handbill in 

Jefferson Standard would have been deemed unprotected 

even if the Board had found otherwise. The handbill thus was

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 19 of 68
20

unprotected conduct for which the employees could be 

discharged, as had also been true of the unprotected activity in 

several cases referenced by the Court in a footnote appended 

to the above-quoted sentence. See 346 U.S. at 478 n.13.

In this case, unlike Jefferson Standard, the employees’ 

third-party appeal indicated its connection to the ongoing 

labor dispute. We therefore must proceed to the second step 

to assess whether the employees’ statements in the television 

segment were so disloyal or maliciously untrue as to 

relinquish the Act’s protection.

B.

The Board concluded that the employees’ 

communications in the news segment were neither “so 

disloyal” nor so “maliciously untrue” as to fall outside the 

Act’s protection. See MasTec, 357 NLRB at 107-08. The 

companies challenge the Board’s decision both as to 

disloyalty and as to malicious untruth. We find no basis to 

overturn the Board on either score under the governing 

standards of review. (We note that, while the Mountain 

Shadows Golf test refers not only to “disloyal” or 

“maliciously untrue” statements but also to “reckless” 

statements, the Board considered the latter category in 

conjunction with disloyalty, see id. at 108, and neither 

company takes issue with the Board’s approach in that 

respect.)

1.

We first consider the Board’s conclusion that the 

technicians’ statements in the interview segment were not “so 

disloyal . . . as to lose the Act’s protection.” Id. at 107. As 

we have explained, it is well-established that third-party 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 20 of 68
21

appeals can fall within the zone of protected activity even if 

indisputably disloyal. See Hormel, 962 F.2d at 1064-65. The 

question therefore is: when does an employee’s participation 

in efforts to obtain third-party support become so disloyal that 

it ceases to fit within the Act’s protection? And on the facts 

here, were the employees’ statements in the interview about 

the new pay policy, and about the companies’ urging them to 

mislead customers, so disloyal as to be unprotected?

Under the Board’s decision, third-party appeals cross the 

line from protected to unprotected disloyalty when they 

become “flagrantly disloyal, wholly incommensurate with any 

grievances which [the employees] might have.” MasTec, 357 

NLRB at 108 (quoting Five Star Transp., Inc., 349 NLRB at 

45); see also, e.g., Manor Care of Easton, Pa., 356 NLRB 

No. 39 (Dec. 1, 2010); Valley Hosp. Med. Ctr., Inc., 351 

NLRB 1250, 1260 (2007); Sacramento Union, 291 NLRB 

540, 546 (1988); Richboro Cmty. Mental Health Council, 242 

NLRB 1267, 1268 (1979); Veeder-Root Co., 237 NLRB 1175, 

1177 (1978). Neither company contends that the “flagrantly 

disloyal”/“wholly incommensurate” standard applied by the 

Board in this case is improper or otherwise contrary to law.

Our dissenting colleague nonetheless takes issue with that 

formulation on the ground that “the NLRA doesn’t immunize 

disloyal behavior” in a third-party appeal at all, regardless of 

the degree of disloyalty. Dissenting Op. 15. That is incorrect, 

and is inconsistent with our precedent. In Jefferson Standard

itself, the Court spoke in terms, not of whether the employees’ 

third-party appeal was disloyal, but instead of whether it

exhibited “such detrimental disloyalty as to provide ‘cause’ 

for” dismissal. 346 U.S. at 472 (emphasis added). 

Accordingly, when we later applied Jefferson Standard in our 

decision in Hormel, we specifically rejected the employer’s 

argument that the Act posed no obstacle to its discharge of an 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 21 of 68
22

employee for engaging in the disloyal conduct of supporting a 

boycott against the company. Although we deemed the 

employee’s conduct in that regard to constitute disloyalty 

“[a]s a rule,” we held that the Act still “protects [the 

employee] from discharge on that account” insofar as his 

actions “arose out of the ongoing labor dispute.” Hormel, 962 

F.2d at 1064-65. Under Hormel, that is, the Act does

immunize disloyalty in a third-party appeal when it is related 

to an ongoing employment dispute.

Our court therefore subsequently accepted the Board’s 

conclusion that, to afford valid grounds for discharge under 

Jefferson Standard, an employee’s third-party appeal in 

connection with an ongoing labor dispute must be more than 

just disloyal: it must be “so disloyal . . . as to lose the Act’s 

protection.” Endicott, 453 F.3d at 537 (emphasis added)

(quotation omitted). And once we accept, as our precedent 

compels, that disloyalty alone is not enough to remove the 

Act’s protections in the context of a third-party appeal, we see 

no facial invalidity in the Board’s general description of the 

requisite nature and degree of disloyalty as “flagrant[] 

disloyal[ty], wholly incommensurate with any grievances 

which [the employee] might have.” MasTec, 357 NLRB at 

108 (quoting Five Star Transp., Inc., 349 NLRB at 45). The 

Board of course might have used various formulations to 

capture a third-party appeal that is unprotected because it is 

disloyal to an extent going sufficiently beyond the seeking of 

public support in connection with an ongoing labor dispute. 

Asking whether a public appeal is “wholly incommensurate” 

with the ongoing grievance, and is “flagrantly disloyal” in that 

sense, is one such formulation. Petitioners evidently agree: 

neither company, as noted, challenges that formulation.

In finding that the technicians’ conduct qualifies as a 

protected third-party appeal under that standard, the Board 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 22 of 68
23

explained that the technicians went to the television station 

“only after repeated unsuccessful attempts to resolve” their 

dispute through direct discussions with MasTec. MasTec, 357 

NLRB at 108. The Board further noted that, although the 

“newscast shed unwelcome light” on the companies’ business 

practices, the segment “directly related to the technicians’ 

grievance about what they considered to be an unfair pay 

policy that they believed forced them to mislead customers” 

about the need for a phone connection to receive television 

programming. Id. In those respects, the technicians’ conduct 

was not “wholly incommensurate with [their] grievances” 

about the pay policy and their being encouraged to mislead 

customers to avoid losing pay under that policy. See id. 

The Board additionally observed that, while the 

technicians might have been aware that the newscast could 

lead some consumers to cancel their service, there was no 

evidence the technicians specifically “intended to inflict such 

harm on the” companies in their statements in the segment “or 

that they acted recklessly without regard for the financial 

consequences to” the companies (as opposed to an intent to 

garner public support for their own position in the ongoing 

pay dispute). Id. (citing Community Hosp. of Roanoke Valley, 

220 NLRB 217, 223 (1975), enf’d 538 F.2d 607 (4th Cir. 

1976); NLRB v. Circle Bindery, Inc., 536 F.2d 447, 452 (1st 

Cir. 1976)). In that sense, the technicians’ third-party appeal 

was no more disloyal (or more “flagrantly” so) than 

employees’ efforts to obtain public support for a boycott of 

their company’s products in an ongoing labor dispute, which, 

as noted, we held in Hormel is protected activity even though 

a breach of their duty of loyalty. See 962 F.2d at 1064-65.

The companies, joined by our dissenting colleague, see 

an inconsistency with Hormel in the Board’s noting (as one 

consideration) the lack of evidence that the employees

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 23 of 68
24

participated in the newscast with the intention to cause 

subscribers to cancel their service rather than the intention to 

gain public support in the pay dispute. In Hormel, we 

addressed three episodes in which an employee sought public 

support for a national boycott of Hormel’s products. See id. 

at 1062-63, 1065. The first two episodes occurred during, and 

in relation to, a labor dispute between the employee’s union 

and the company. The Act thus “protect[ed] [the employee]

from discharge on that account” even though the conduct

constituted disloyalty. Id. at 1065. But the third episode took 

place after the labor dispute had ended. See id. at 1063, 1064. 

We found that support of a consumer boycott against one’s 

own company at that point in time—“after the end of the 

labor dispute,” id. at 1064—necessarily presents grounds for 

discharging the employee for disloyalty, because, by 

definition, it bears no relation to an ongoing labor dispute. 

The sole issue in Hormel with respect to the employee’s postdispute conduct therefore was whether he in fact “support[ed] 

the consumer boycott of Hormel products”—if he did, his 

actions “were not protected” and he could be “lawfully 

discharged” for disloyalty. Id.; see id. at 1065-66.

The companies’ argument here focuses on our analysis of 

that issue in Hormel, i.e., whether the employee’s post-dispute 

actions constituted support of the boycott, in which case it 

was unprotected disloyalty. The conduct in question 

consisted of driving a truck in a parade leading to a rally for 

the boycott and then attending the rally. See id. at 1063, 

1065-66. The employee’s actions, to any observer, would 

have appeared to constitute support of the boycott. The Board 

nonetheless concluded otherwise, on the rationale that, no 

matter how his actions may have appeared, the company 

failed to prove that he in fact intended to support the boycott. 

See id. at 1064-65. We explained that the Board erred in 

assessing the employee’s support for the boycott based solely 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 24 of 68
25

on his actual intent (i.e., what he “believed in his heart of 

hearts”), rather than asking whether a “reasonable observer” 

would infer that the employee “acted in furtherance of the 

boycott.” Id. at 1065-66. Here, the companies argue that the 

Board similarly erred by taking into account as one 

consideration whether the technicians, in participating in the 

newscast, “intended” to cause consumers to cancel their 

service. MasTec, 357 NLRB at 108.

The companies’ argument is unpersuasive. The relevant 

discussion in Hormel addressed a different question than the 

one at issue here. In this case, the Board took note of whether 

the technicians intended to cause subscribers to cancel their 

service when assessing whether the technicians’ participation 

in the news interview was “so disloyal” as to fall outside the 

Act’s protection. In Hormel, by contrast, the discussion of 

employee intent pertained to the question of whether the 

employee had engaged in disloyal conduct in the first place—

viz., whether he had acted in support of the boycott. In other 

words, the question in Hormel was, “did he do it?,” whereas 

the question here is, assuming he did it, “does what he did rise 

to the level of flagrant disloyalty?” While Hormel bars any 

consideration of intent as to the former question, the decision 

does not address, and thus does not prohibit, the consideration 

of intent when assessing whether an employee’s third-party 

appeal rises to the level of flagrant disloyalty.

Our dissenting colleague agrees that Hormel involved a 

different question, but believes that the difference is 

immaterial. See Dissenting Op. at 7-8. We disagree. Hormel 

establishes that an employee of course cannot disclaim an 

action that rings out as disloyal to all the world by contending 

that he in fact did not intend to act disloyally. The employee 

had “violated his duty of loyalty to Hormel” by “driving in 

the parade and attending the rally to which it led”—he 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 25 of 68
26

“clearly communicated to every observer that he was a 

member of the group supporting the boycott,” regardless of 

whether the company showed what he “believed in his heart 

of hearts.” Hormel, 962 F.2d at 1066. That is a meaningful 

limitation in circumstances like those in Hormel, in which the 

employee could not have been engaged in a protected thirdparty appeal because the labor dispute had already ended. As 

we explained, “extending protection to such conduct would so 

circumscribe as to defeat the employer’s right to discharge an 

employee” for disloyalty. Id. at 1065. That understanding 

applies in any situation involving a discharge for disloyalty, 

not just in a third-party appeal to the public: whenever the 

ground for discharge is disloyalty, Hormel precludes

insulating the employee from discharge on a theory that, 

however much it may appear that he engaged in disloyal 

conduct, he might not have intended to do so. Under Hormel, 

the appearance is enough to establish that the employee 

engaged in disloyal conduct.

The dissent believes that, although Hormel involved the 

question whether the employee engaged in disloyal conduct 

for which he could be discharged (because it was unconnected 

to any ongoing dispute), the decision’s bar against 

considering employee intent as to that question necessarily

also extends to the determination whether, when an

employee’s third-party appeal is connected to an ongoing 

dispute and thus may be protected, it is so disloyal as to lose 

the Act’s protections. Hormel itself did not think it was 

reaching the latter issue: we said that the case “turn[e]d upon 

the question whether the Board properly determined that [the 

employee] did not support the consumer boycott of Hormel 

products after the end of the labor dispute,” when his conduct 

by definition would be grounds for discharge if disloyal. Id.

at 1064. To be sure, in answering that question, we observed 

that “the Act requires an objective test of disloyalty.” Id. at 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 26 of 68
27

1065. But that statement must be read in context, not in an 

expansive manner reaching even questions not before the 

court. Indeed, our dissenting colleague allows that intent can 

continue to play at least some role in connection with 

disloyalty after Hormel. See Dissenting Op. 11 n.4. And 

when read in context, it is apparent that Hormel’s mandate for 

an “objective test” pertained to the question whether the 

employee had engaged in the disloyal act of supporting a 

boycott against his company, see 962 F.2d at 1064-65, in 

which event he could be discharged for unprotected disloyalty

having no connection to an ongoing dispute.

The Board could reasonably conclude that, even if an 

employee’s subjective intent cannot bear on that question

under Hormel, an employee’s intentions can still shed 

meaningful light on whether, when a third-party appeal is 

related to an ongoing grievance, it is protected—in particular, 

on whether the employee primarily aimed to draw the public’s 

support in the dispute or instead intended to go further by 

gratuitously causing harm to the company (i.e., “wholly 

incommensurate” with the grievance). The Board thus could

consider an actor’s state of mind to bear on whether the 

degree and nature of his disloyalty warrants denying him the 

Act’s protections even though his appeal relates to an ongoing 

grievance. See Sierra Publ’g Co., 889 F.2d at 218-19 n.13 

(“motive, if discernible, may illuminate loyalty or 

disloyalty”); cf. Morisette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 249 

n.21 (1952) (“intent is of the very essence of [criminal] 

offenses based on disloyalty”). Here, accordingly, the Board 

permissibly considered whether the employees’ statements in 

the news segment sought to draw public support for their 

grievance or instead aimed gratuitously to harm their 

employer by causing consumers to cancel services. Hormel 

does not bar consideration of an employee’s motivations in 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 27 of 68
28

that fashion to assess if a third-party appeal connected to an 

ongoing dispute is so disloyal as to be unprotected.

The companies get no further in their reliance on our 

decision in Endicott Interconnect Technologies, Inc. v. NLRB, 

453 F.3d 532. There, an employee, in the aftermath of layoffs 

at his company, strongly criticized the company’s 

management in statements to a reporter and in an internet 

posting. Id. at 534-35. He told the reporter that the layoffs 

left “gaping holes in th[e] business” and resulted in “voids in 

the [company’s] critical knowledge base.” Id. at 534. After 

the company warned him against making such statements, he 

nonetheless posted a message on a public internet forum 

saying, among other things: “This business is being tanked 

by a group of people that have no good ability to manage it. 

They will put it into the dirt just like the companies of the past 

. . . .” Id. at 535. The company fired him, but the Board 

found that he had engaged in protected activity and ordered 

his reinstatement. Id.

Upon review, we set aside the Board’s decision. We 

noted that the Board had invoked its Mountain Shadows Golf 

test for identifying protected third-party appeals, and held that 

the test was an accurate statement of the law. Id. at 537. We 

explained, though, that while the test calls for assessing 

whether an employee’s statements were “so disloyal, reckless, 

or maliciously untrue as to lose the Act’s protection,” the 

Board had disregarded the “disloyalty” aspect of the standard 

altogether, instead focusing exclusively on whether the 

statements were maliciously untrue or reckless. Id. 

Examining the question of disloyalty in the first instance, we 

held that the employee’s statements were so disloyal as to fall 

outside the Act’s protection. We emphasized that the 

offending statements had been made by an “experienced 

insider,” and endangered the viability of the company at a 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 28 of 68
29

critical time when it “was struggling to get up and running 

under new management.” Id. 

Our decision in Endicott did not compel the Board in this 

case to conclude that the technicians’ participation in the 

television interview amounted to flagrant disloyalty. Endicott 

of course did not establish that all conduct amounting to 

disloyalty automatically affords grounds for discharge: 

Endicott came after Hormel, in which we had already 

established that third-party appeals, even if amounting to 

disloyalty, can be protected concerted activity when 

connected to an ongoing labor dispute. See id. at 536 (citing 

Hormel). 

The question of whether a third-party appeal is so

disloyal as to fall outside the Act’s protection is an inherently 

fact-intensive, context-dependent one. See, e.g., Sierra Pub. 

Co., 889 F.2d at 217; see also Jefferson Standard, 346 U.S. at 

475-76. In concluding in Endicott that the employee’s 

statements crossed the line from protected to unprotected 

disloyalty, we thus focused on case-specific considerations 

such as the employee’s status as an experienced insider, the 

particular vulnerability of the company as it was coming 

under new management, and the “caustic[]” nature of the 

employee’s attacks claiming that the new management would 

“tank[]” the company and “put it into the dirt.” 453 F.3d at 

537. This case involves differently situated employees and 

companies. It also involves different types of statements, in 

that the technicians made no assertions about management 

decisions or management’s running of the company outside 

the specific context of their grievances about the pay policy. 

Significantly, moreover, we decided Endicott in 

circumstances in which the Board had failed to apply the 

“disloyalty” aspect of the Mountain Shadows Golf test 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 29 of 68
30

altogether. See id. Considering the issue in a vacuum, we 

concluded that the employee’s statements rose to the level of 

unprotected disloyalty. Here, by contrast, the Board 

specifically examined the question of disloyalty on the facts 

of this case, concluding that the technicians’ statements were 

not so disloyal as to lose the Act’s protection. In that setting, 

we do not reexamine the issue as if we were deciding it on a 

blank slate. Rather, we assess only whether there is 

“substantial evidence in the record to support the Board’s 

conclusion.” Hormel, 962 F.2d at 1066.

Substantial evidence supports the Board’s determination 

that the technicians’ statements in the news segment were not 

“flagrantly disloyal, wholly incommensurate” with their 

grievances against the pay policy. Neither of the companies 

argues otherwise. To prevail in any such argument, the 

companies would need to demonstrate that no reasonable 

mind could find the evidence adequate to support the Board’s 

finding. Universal Camera, 340 U.S. at 477. They could not 

do so on the record before the Board.

The Board explained that: the technicians participated in 

the newscast only after unsuccessfully attempting to resolve 

their grievance directly with their employer; the news 

segment directly related to their objections to a pay policy 

viewed by them to be unfair and to call for them to mislead 

customers; and their statements sought to bring attention to 

the nature of their grievances rather than to unnecessarily 

tarnish their employer. MasTec, 357 NLRB at 108. In those 

circumstances, it was reasonable for the Board to conclude 

that the technicians’ statements in the interview were not 

“flagrantly disloyal, wholly incommensurate with any 

grievances which they might have.” Id.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 30 of 68
31

2.

We turn next to the Board’s finding that the technicians’ 

statements in the interview were not “maliciously untrue.” 

For a third-party appeal to fall outside the Act’s protection on 

grounds of malicious untruth, it is not enough for employee 

statements to be false, inaccurate, or misleading. Such 

statements may be “untrue,” but they would not be 

“maliciously untrue.” For statements to be “maliciously 

untrue and unprotected,” they must be “made with knowledge 

of their falsity or with reckless disregard for their truth or 

falsity.” MasTec, 357 NLRB at 107 (citing TNT Logistics 

North America, Inc., 347 NLRB 568, 569 (2006), rev’d. sub 

nom. Jolliff v. NLRB, 513 F.3d 600 (6th Cir. 2008)); see

Sprint/United Mgmt. Co., 339 NLRB 1012, 1018 (2003); 

Senior Citizens Coordinating Council of Riverbay Cmty. Inc., 

330 NLRB 1100, 1107 n.17 (2000); Delta Health Ctr., Inc., 

310 NLRB 26, 36 (1993); see also Linn v. United Plant 

Guard Workers of Am., Local 114, 383 U.S. 53, 64-65 (1966) 

(adopting actual malice standard from New York Times Co. v. 

Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 280 (1964) for libel actions under 

state law arising out of labor disputes). And while our 

dissenting colleague questions whether the malicious-untruth 

inquiry should have any independent office, see Dissenting

Op. 23-24, our decision in Endicott validated the Board’s 

standard under which it examines whether a communication is 

“maliciously untrue” so “as to lose the Act’s protection.” 453 

F.3d at 537. We have no occasion to revisit the matter here.

The companies do not challenge the Board’s legal 

understanding of the malicious-untruth standard. Instead, 

they argue that certain statements in the news segment rose to 

the level of malicious untruth, and that the Board erred in 

finding otherwise. We review those arguments under the 

substantial evidence standard. We ask, that is, whether the 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 31 of 68
32

Board could reasonably find the evidence adequate to support 

its conclusion that the technicians’ statements were not 

maliciously untrue. See Universal Camera, 340 U.S. at 477. 

Moreover, when applying the substantial evidence standard to 

the Board’s decisions about protected versus unprotected 

conduct, we give “considerable deference” to the Board’s 

“reasonable” conclusions because of the Board’s particular 

expertise in the area. Citizens Inv. Servs., 430 F.3d at 1198.

The Board concluded that, “for the most part,” the 

technicians’ statements in the news segment “were accurate 

representations of what [the companies] had instructed the 

technicians to tell customers” about the need to connect a 

phone line for the receiver to work. MasTec, 357 NLRB at 

107. “Any arguable departures from the truth,” the Board 

found, “were no more than good-faith misstatements or 

incomplete statements, not malicious falsehoods justifying 

removal of the Act’s protection.” Id. at 108. We hold that the 

Board could reasonably consider the evidence adequate to 

support its findings.

a.

The first statements at issue are those in which the 

technicians said that they were told to lie to customers about 

the need for a phone connection and that their pay would be 

reduced if they did not lie. In particular, one technician 

observed, “If we don’t lie to the customers, we get back 

charged for it”; and another said, “We don’t have a choice,” 

after the reporter remarked, “It’s either lie or lose money.” 

MasTec, 357 NLRB at 105-06.

The companies argue that the Board improperly 

disregarded the ALJ’s finding that the employees were “never 

explicitly told to lie.” ALJ Op. 19 (J.A. 19). In fact, the 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 32 of 68
33

Board agreed that the technicians were not explicitly told to 

lie; it simply found that they were “essentially told to lie.” 

MasTec, 357 NLRB at 107 (emphasis added). Substantial 

evidence supports the Board’s conclusion. For instance, in a 

DirecTV training video—which the ALJ, Board, and this 

court all had the same opportunity to review—two DirecTV 

Vice Presidents advised the technicians to tell customers 

(falsely) that connecting a phone line “is a mandatory part of 

the installation and [needed] for the equipment to function 

correctly.” Training Video Tr. 2 (J.A. 431). Neither 

company claims that statement was true. 

Additionally, the Board explained, even if the companies 

“may have avoided expressly using the word ‘lie’ when 

suggesting ways to overcome obstacles to making receiverphone line connections,” the technicians were instructed to do 

“‘whatever it takes’ to make the connection” and to “tell 

customers ‘whatever you have to tell them.’” MasTec, 357 

NLRB at 107. In the Board’s view, the “technicians would 

readily understand these instructions to include ‘lie if you 

have to.’” Id. That is at least a reasonable conclusion to draw 

from the evidence. As a result, substantial evidence supports 

the Board’s conclusion that there was no malicious untruth in 

the technicians’ statements that they were told to lie. 

Even so, the companies argue, it was maliciously 

untruthful for the technicians to say that they would lose 

money if they did not lie. The companies do not dispute that 

technicians were subject to a back-charge of $5 for each 

receiver they did not connect to a phone line. The companies 

see a malicious untruth, though, in the lack of specificity in 

the interview segment that the per-receiver back-charge 

applied only if a technician failed to connect at least half of 

his receivers to a phone line over a 30-day period. 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 33 of 68
34

Substantial evidence supports the Board’s conclusion that 

the absence of a fully elaborated explanation of the pay policy 

was not so maliciously untruthful as to lose the Act’s 

protection. As an initial matter, the technicians had little, if 

any, control over the editing of their interview or the content 

of the final segment. See id. at 107 n.12. At any rate, as the 

Board observed, the technicians’ statements in the edited 

segment “fairly reflected their personal experiences under the 

new pay scheme,” in that “[a]lmost all of them . . . had failed 

to achieve at least a 50 percent connection rate.” Id. Indeed, 

some technicians may have lacked a full understanding that 

the back-charge applied only if their connection rate fell 

below the threshold. See Hearing Tr. 391 (J.A. 299). In that 

context, the Board reasonably concluded, “the failure to fully 

explain the 50 percent connection rule was at most an 

inaccuracy,” and there “is no basis in the record to find that 

that technicians knowingly and maliciously withheld that 

information in order to mislead the viewing public.” MasTec, 

357 NLRB at 107. 

Our dissenting colleague opines that, in a separate 

respect, the employees made maliciously untruthful 

statements by indicating that they would lose money if they 

did not lie to customers about the need for a phone 

connection. See Dissenting Op. at 19-20. The dissent agrees 

that the companies told the technicians to mislead customers

into believing that the receivers would not work without a 

phone connection. Id. at 21. But, our colleague reasons, the 

technicians still could have avoided any back-charge without 

lying to customers if the technicians disregarded the direction 

to lie and instead found other ways to improve their 

connection rates beyond the 50% threshold. Again, however, 

almost all of the technicians in fact had been unable to 

achieve that connection rate as a matter of their own actual 

experience. From their perspective, misleading customers 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 34 of 68
35

into thinking there was no choice about a phone connection 

would have materially improved connection rates (and thus 

eliminated back-charges)—indeed, that is presumably why 

the companies essentially told the technicians to lie. 

Considered in that light, the Board was not required to 

find a malicious falsehood in the technicians’ indication that 

they faced continued back-charges if they did not lie. That 

was exactly their experience. We cannot set aside the Board’s 

findings on this issue as unsupported by substantial evidence.

b.

The next statement at issue concerns a MasTec 

supervisor’s suggestion that technicians should tell customers 

that a receiver would “blow up” if not connected to a phone 

line. In the interview segment, a technician referenced that 

comment by saying: “Tell the customer whatever you have to 

tell them. Tell them if these phone lines are not connected the 

receiver will blow up.” MasTec, 357 NLRB at 105. And 

when the reporter queried, “You’ve been told to tell 

customers that,” the technician responded, “We’ve been told 

to say that. Whatever it takes to get the phone line into that 

receiver.” Id.

The companies contend that the Board ignored the ALJ’s 

credibility-based determination that the “blow up” comment 

was made in jest. In fact, however, the Board expressly 

characterized the comment as a “joking suggestion.” Id. at 

107. But the Board determined that, even as a joke, the 

supervisor’s comment “underscored th[e] message” that the 

technicians should mislead customers if necessary, “as it 

undoubtedly was meant to do.” Id. That is at least a 

reasonable conclusion about the comment given the context in 

which it was made. Indeed, the MasTec supervisor made the 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 35 of 68
36

“blow up” comment in the course of advising technicians to 

tell customers “whatever you have to tell them” and do 

“whatever it takes” to connect a phone line. Id. at 104. The 

technician’s statements in the interview segment reinforced 

that context in expressly tying the “blow up” comment to the 

mandate to tell customers “whatever you have to tell them” 

and “[w]hatever it takes.” Id. at 105.

Insofar as the companies argue that the technician’s 

statement rose to the level of being maliciously untrue simply 

because he did not expressly explain that the “blow up” 

comment was originally made in jest, we find no reversible 

error in the Board’s decision. To the extent the comment was 

not self-evidently hyperbolic, the technician’s failure to spell 

that out did not necessarily render his repetition of the 

comment maliciously untrue. It is undisputed that a MasTec

supervisor made the comment, so the technician’s repetition 

of it was not untruthful on its face. Accepting that the 

comment was originally uttered as a joke, and that the 

technicians who heard it seem to have understood it that way, 

it was still part of the companies’ telling technicians to do 

“whatever it takes,” including lying to customers, to get 

receivers connected to phone lines. And because the 

technician’s recounting of the “blow up” comment in the 

news segment specifically (and accurately) tied the comment 

to the further direction to say “whatever it takes,” he 

conveyed a sense of the general context in which the 

comment was originally made. 

In those circumstances, the absence of express 

specification that this particular way of being told to do 

“whatever it takes” was meant hyperbolically (as opposed to 

literally) did not require the Board to find that the technician’s

repetition of the comment was maliciously untrue. Indeed, to 

the extent the hyperbolic nature of the “blow up” comment 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 36 of 68
37

would not have been immediately apparent to a listener, it is 

hard to see how the comment could have been understood in 

any other way upon reflection. After all, to believe that the 

supervisor in fact wanted technicians to tell customers a

receiver would blow up without a phone connection, one 

would have to think that the companies, for some reason,

wanted to promote the (false) belief that their product was so 

dangerous that it was susceptible to exploding in customers’

homes. Why, a customer presumably would think, would any 

credible company sell me a product that might blow up inside 

my home, much less do so and then supposedly give me a 

choice to eliminate the danger at no cost? A listener to the 

interview in all likelihood thus would have understood—

accurately—that the suggestion to tell customers the receiver 

might blow up had been made in jest, and that the companies 

did not in fact want the technicians to propagate the false 

belief that their product could explode inside a family’s home.

That is not to say that the Board necessarily would have 

been unjustified had it found that the failure to specify the 

joking nature of the “blow up” comment rendered the 

statement’s repetition a malicious falsehood. But we do not 

approach that factual inquiry with fresh eyes; rather, under the 

governing standard, we affirm the Board as long as it could 

reasonably find the evidence for its conclusions to be 

adequate. The Board reasonably found that, as with the 

technicians’ failure to explain all the details of the pay policy, 

the recounting of the “blow up” comment without fully 

elaborating its context amounted, at most, to an “incomplete 

statement[],” not a “malicious falsehood[] justifying removal 

of the Act’s protection.” Id. at 108.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 37 of 68
38

c.

Finally, the companies argue that statements in the 

broadcast linking the technicians’ grievances to extra fees for 

customers were maliciously untrue. In introducing the story 

at the outset of the segment, a news anchor in the studio said 

the technicians would be “talking about a company policy that 

charges you for something you may not ever use.” Id. at 105. 

And subsequently, the reporter who interviewed the 

technicians said that the “lie”—i.e., that a phone connection is 

necessary to receive a signal—“could cost customers big 

money . . . the fee to have a phone line installed could be as 

high as $52.00 per room . . . want a wireless phone jack? 

That will cost you another 50 bucks.” Id. The companies 

contend that those statements were maliciously untrue 

because the extra charges would apply, not for a standard 

phone connection, but only for a premium installation in 

which there would be no visible phone cord.

The reporter, however, stated only that the misleading 

suggestion about the need for a phone connection “could” 

result in an added installation cost for customers, not that it 

necessarily would do so. At any rate, the Board 

acknowledged that the way the segment described the issue 

“may have been misleading.” Id. at 107 n.12. But the Board 

explained that all of the relevant statements were made by the 

reporter or other news personnel, not by the technicians

themselves. Id. And the technicians “testified without 

contradiction that their only input was in responding to [the 

reporter’s] questions on the day of the interview,” and that 

they had no opportunity to see the segment before it aired. Id. 

The companies note that none of the technicians later 

disavowed the reporter’s statements, and some even 

characterized the reporter as their “spokesperson” after the 

broadcast. See Hearing Tr. 292-93 (J.A. 255-56). Even so, 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 38 of 68
39

given that statements are unprotected only when “made with 

knowledge of their falsity or with reckless disregard for their 

truth or falsity,” MasTec, 357 NLRB at 107 (citing TNT 

Logistics N. Am., Inc., 347 NLRB 568, 569 (2006)), we will 

not disturb the Board’s finding that the statements by third 

parties do not meet that standard.

C.

DirecTV also argues that, even if the technicians had a 

protected right to criticize their direct employer (MasTec) in 

connection with their grievances, they had no protected rights 

vis-à-vis their employer’s customer (DirecTV). That 

argument affords no basis for granting relief to DirecTV. The 

Act makes clear that, if nothing else, DirecTV committed an 

unfair labor practice by causing MasTec to terminate its 

employees. See ALJ Op. 17 (J.A. 17). DirecTV is an 

employer under the Act (and does not argue otherwise). And 

“[a]n employer violates the Act when it directs, instructs, or 

orders another employer with whom it has business dealings 

to discharge, layoff, transfer, or otherwise affect[] the 

working conditions of the latter’s employees” for an 

unprotected reason. Dews Constr. Corp., 231 NLRB 182, 182

n.4 (1977); see also Int’l Shipping Ass’n, 297 NLRB 1059, 

1059 (1990) (An employer “may violate Section 8(a) not only 

with respect to its own employees but also by actions 

affecting employees who do not stand in such an immediate 

employer/employee relationship.”).

* * * * *

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 39 of 68
40

For the foregoing reasons, we deny the companies’ 

petitions for review and grant the Board’s cross-application 

for enforcement.

So ordered.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 40 of 68
BROWN, Circuit Judge, dissenting: Twenty-six technicians 

objected to their employer’s new, exacting compensation 

terms. When their employer refused to relent, they pitched 

their story to a local news station’s consumer watchdog 

reporter. These employees then appeared on television in an 

effort to curry public sympathy for their demands. So far, no 

problem. The NLRA has always blessed organized efforts 

like these aimed at gaining advantage in a labor dispute. 

But when these technicians falsely accused their 

employer during a television broadcast of certain outrageous 

business practices, they crossed a line—from labor dispute to 

public disparagement; from concern about wages and working 

conditions to a vendetta aimed at undermining the 

Companies’ reputation. True, the NLRA aggressively 

protects organizing efforts, but the core of the Act is the 

balance it strikes between employees’ and employers’ 

legitimate, conflicting interests. There are limits to how far 

employees may go in pursuit of bargaining advantage. Those 

who work within these limits are protected, but those who 

ignore them, who pursue their ends through inappropriate 

means, are stripped of the Act’s protections. 

This is not a close case. Had the MasTec technicians 

honestly and fairly discussed their labor dispute with the news 

station, their aggressive tactics could be sustained as a proper 

appeal to outside parties. See Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB, 437 U.S. 

556, 565 (1978). But these technicians chose instead to feed 

the station a false, disparaging story they knew would trigger 

public outrage. The two most damning lies they told the 

viewers of WKMG-TV Channel 6 were that their employer 

(1) required them to lie (it did not), and (2) seriously 

encouraged them to scare customers into accepting an 

unnecessary—and excessively expensive—service by 

warning that the product would “blow up.” To be sure, a 

MasTec supervisor did jokingly suggest that, but everyone 

present understood it to be in jest. By soberly repeating that 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 41 of 68
2

joke to a public audience without its context and as though it 

were a serious instruction, these technicians left the NLRA 

and its protections behind. As “[t]here is no more elemental 

cause for discharge of an employee than disloyalty to his 

employer,” NLRB v. Local Union No. 1229, Int’l Broth. of 

Elec. Workers, 346 U.S. 464, 472 (1953) (Jefferson 

Standard), I can’t blame MasTec for showing them the door. 

And frankly, neither can the NLRA.

It’s not hard to see why the technicians resorted to these 

manipulative gambits: an ordinary labor dispute would not be 

newsworthy, but tales of corporate perfidy and consumer 

fraud would undoubtedly pique the interest of Channel 6 and 

the viewing public. Still, self-interest does not excuse 

mendacity, and MasTec acted well within its rights when it 

fired these disloyal technicians.

* * *

Of course, as I write in dissent, I’m alone in my view of 

this case. The court upholds the Board’s determination that 

the NLRA requires employers to suffer insubordination and 

damaging falsehoods in silence unless they can prove the 

employees’ vindictive mental state. “Common sense 

sometimes matters in resolving legal disputes.” Southern 

New England Telephone Co. v. NLRB, 793 F.3d 93, 94 (D.C. 

Cir. 2015). Here, however, neither common sense nor the 

ordinary rules of statutory construction are in evidence—a 

lacuna that indicts the unconstitutionally generous standards 

of review through which federal courts routinely cede 

statutory interpretation to biased administrative tribunals. 

This case, for example, demonstrates the lengths to which the 

Board will go to contort an evenhanded Act into an antiemployer manifesto. Instead of attempting to balance 

conflicting interests, the NLRB reacts like a pinball machine 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 42 of 68
3

stuck on tilt; reflexively ensuring employers always lose a 

turn.1 

I.

The NLRA prohibits employers from discharging 

employees for engaging in certain kinds of protected conduct. 

See 29 U.S.C. § 157 (“Employees shall have the right to selforganization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations . . . 

and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of 

collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection . . . .”). 

This provision doesn’t lend employees unconditional cover, 

however. Instead, they are only protected to the extent their 

conduct is (1) “related to an ongoing [labor] dispute” and (2) 

“not so disloyal, reckless, or maliciously untrue as to lose the 

Act’s protection.” In re American Golf Corp., 330 NLRB 

1238, 1240 (2000); see also Jefferson Standard, 346 U.S. at 

477. This has been the Board’s rule for dischargeable 

disloyalty—until today. 

 1 The Board’s analysis hinges on hedges. See, e.g., Op. 23 (quoting 

the Board finding “the technicians’ conduct was not ‘wholly 

incommensurate with [their] grievances’”); id. 32 (“The Board 

concluded that, ‘for the most part,’ the technicians’ statements in 

the news segment ‘were accurate . . . .’”); id. (“‘Any arguable 

departures from the truth,’ the Board found, ‘were no more than 

good-faith misstatements . . . .’”); id. (“In fact, the Board agreed 

that the technicians were not explicitly told to lie; it simply found 

that they were ‘essentially told to lie.’”); id. 34 (“[T]he Board 

reasonably concluded, ‘the failure to fully explain the 50 percent 

connection rule was at most an inaccuracy’”); id. 38 (“[T]he Board 

acknowledged that the way the segment described the issue ‘may 

have been misleading.’”) (emphasis added). Do not be misled—the 

Board’s overuse of adverbs and qualifiers is a sign of evasion, not 

precision. See Stephen King, ON WRITING 117-22 (2002). 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 43 of 68
4

Much like the NLRA itself, this rule mediates the 

conflicting rights of employers and employees. On one hand, 

“there is no more elemental cause for discharge of an 

employee than disloyalty to his employer.” Id. at 472; see 

also 29 U.S.C. § 160(c) (“No order of the Board shall require 

the reinstatement of any individual as an employee who has 

been suspended or discharged, or the payment to him of any 

back pay, if such individual was suspended or discharged for 

cause.”). On the other, employees enjoy a right to engage in 

concerted activity, which can include public criticism of an 

employer’s labor policies. When employees are fired for their 

conduct during a labor dispute, a “difficulty arises.” Jefferson 

Standard, 346 U.S. at 475. Were they fired for disloyalty, or 

for protected conduct their employer happened to dislike? 

This case involves precisely that difficulty.

Because in my view the technicians seized a public 

opportunity to sharply attack the Companies’ business 

policies and harm their reputation with false statements, I 

would grant the Companies’ petition. The Board’s two 

determinations—that the technicians’ actions and statements 

were not “so disloyal” or “maliciously untrue”—violated 

circuit precedent and were unsupported by substantial 

evidence. More fundamentally, the frameworks underpinning 

both of the Board’s determinations are themselves unfaithful 

to the NLRA and Supreme Court precedent. 

A.

The court majority upholds a Board determination that 

excused a series of disparaging, false remarks several 

employees made during a television broadcast to a journalist 

whose only interest was in exposing and publicizing corporate 

wrongdoing harmful to consumers. In reaching that 

conclusion, the Board ignored binding circuit precedent; by 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 44 of 68
5

accepting the Board’s action, the majority eviscerates that 

precedent. But, we are not the only court to have construed 

the NLRA. Even if the Board could excuse itself from our 

precedents (an option I do not concede) and a panel of this 

court could rewrite an inconvenient case (an alternative 

ordinarily available only with the acquiescence of the full 

court), the text of the NLRA and the Supreme Court’s 

interpretation of it still preclude the Board’s result.

1.

Our controlling decision in George A. Hormel & Co. v. 

NLRB, 962 F.2d 1061, 1065 (D.C. Cir. 1992), requires we 

grant the Companies’ petition. To see why, let’s examine 

what the Board determined. As to whether the technicians’ 

conduct was sufficiently disloyal to lose NLRA protection, 

the Board concluded:

“While the technicians may have been aware that 

some consumers might cancel the [Companies’] 

services after listening to the newscast, there is no 

evidence that they intended to inflict such harm on the 

[Companies] or that they acted recklessly without 

regard for the financial consequences to the 

[Companies’] businesses. We therefore find that the 

technicians did not engage in unprotected disloyal or 

reckless conduct.”

Mastec Advanced Techs, 357 NLRB 103, 108 (2011) 

(emphasis added). Note this paragraph’s animating logic: 

because there was no evidence of intent to harm their 

employer, the employees’ harmful statements were not 

sufficiently disloyal. There’s one small problem with this 

subjective approach to disloyalty: we expressly—and 

unequivocally—rejected it. See Hormel, 962 F.2d at 1065.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 45 of 68
6

In Hormel, an employee was fired for attending a rally 

supporting a boycott of his employer. The Board purported to 

examine the employee’s subjective intent and concluded he 

did not intend any disloyalty. We reversed. Differing views 

on the relevance of employee intent accounted for these 

opposing conclusions. The Board required the employer to 

show it reasonably believed (from the “ostensible evidence”) 

that the employee “personally embraced” the boycott. See 

George A. Hormel & Co. and Robert W. Langemeier United 

Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Local 

Union No. 22, 301 NLRB 47, 87 (1991). We disagreed, 

explaining such a “subjective test” couldn’t be squared with 

the NLRA’s “statutory policy of preserving the employer’s 

right to discharge an employee for disloyalty.” Hormel, 962 

F.2d at 1065. The question should have been whether “any 

reasonable observer” would infer the employee acted in 

furtherance of disloyal behavior (the boycott), not whether the 

employee intended to be disloyal. Id. at 1066. 

Hormel’s holding was quite clear: the NLRA “requires 

an objective test of disloyalty.” Id. at 1065 (emphasis added). 

In our view, requiring employers to assess intent “would so 

circumscribe as to defeat the employer’s right to discharge an 

employee who is working against the employer’s business 

interest.” Id. An employee may wear a pro-boycott t-shirt 

because he “likes the colors” or to fit in with friends, but 

“[w]hatever his reason, that employee is unquestionably 

promoting the boycott. Anyone who sees him gets that 

message.” Id. The employer has a right to fire that disloyal 

employee no matter what he intended, but “under the Board’s 

subjective test, the employer could not lawfully discharge him 

without showing” the employee wore the shirt “to actually 

encourage or support the boycott.” Id.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 46 of 68
7

Today’s majority excuses the Board’s obvious 

circumvention of Hormel, rather than apply its clear holding. 

According to the Board, what protected these technicians 

wasn’t a lack of evidence that they disparaged the companies, 

but a lack of evidence they intended to do so. See Mastec, 

357 NLRB at 108. This decision is identical to the analysis 

reversed in Hormel, requiring employers to assess intent 

before punishing objectively disloyal behavior. That 

approach violates the NLRA. 962 F.2d at 1065.

The court’s rewriting of Hormel renders this once-vibrant 

precedent a mere rain shadow to the mountain the majority 

would have employers climb. The majority rescues the Board 

by distinguishing Hormel in two ways, one irrelevant and the 

other incorrect. 

First, the majority insists Hormel “addressed a different 

question than the one at issue here,” Op. 25, that is, 

addressing the propriety of subjective tests only as to whether 

an act of disloyalty occurred, not as to whether that act was 

“flagrantly disloyal.” Id. Consequently, the majority claims 

Hormel poses no obstacle to considering “an employee’s 

[subjective] intentions” to “shed meaningful light on” “the 

degree and nature of his disloyalty,” i.e., to determine 

“flagrant” disloyalty. Op. 27. The result is unintelligible. 

Hormel now precludes reliance on the employee’s subjective 

intent to determine whether the employee’s conduct was 

disloyal, but permits the employee’s subjective intent to 

determine the “degree and nature” of disloyalty. Tellingly, 

the majority attempts to reassure us Hormel retains 

precedential value—to its own facts. See Op. 26 (“That is a 

meaningful limitation [on the use of subjective intent], 

especially in circumstances like those in Hormel. . . .”).

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 47 of 68
8

The majority is of course correct that the specific 

question in Hormel (“did he do it?”) is different from the one 

at issue here (“was it flagrantly disloyal?”). But, remember, 

Hormel rejected the subjective approach in order to vindicate 

“the statutory policy of preserving the employer’s right to 

discharge an employee for disloyalty,” 962 F.2d at 1065, a 

right the Supreme Court described as “elemental” and “plain,” 

Jefferson Standard, 346 U.S. at 472, 475. How can a 

statutory policy be threatened by the use of subjective intent 

to determine disloyal conduct, but not be threatened by using 

subjective intent to determine the “degree” of disloyalty? 

How can an employer’s right to discharge for disloyalty be 

“elemental” and “plain” when it hinges on an employee’s 

subjective intent? The answer is self-evident: It cannot. Only 

by adding an unwarranted gloss to the meaning of disloyalty 

and subtracting from the law as articulated by the Court can 

the majority fashion its purported distinction. This is revealed 

in the majority’s sub silentio reversal of Hormel’s holding 

that the disloyalty inquiry is “a matter of law.” Compare 962 

F.2d at 1066 with Op. 29 (“The question of whether employee 

conduct is so disloyal as to fall outside the Act’s protection is 

an inherently fact-intensive, context-dependent one.”). Such 

an outcome does a disservice to the rule of law. Hormel’s

broad rationale vindicated a clear statutory policy against 

using subjective intent to determine disloyal behavior. Its 

logic applies with equal force to preclude subjective intent 

from determining the degree of disloyalty. And it must,

otherwise its insistence on an objective test would be 

pointless. 

Second, the majority incorrectly argues it was the 

Board’s reliance on subjective evidence of intent that 

offended the Hormel court, rather than reliance on intent 

altogether. To the court majority, Hormel prohibits 

measuring employee intent by reference to a purely subjective 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 48 of 68
9

standard (what’s in the employee’s “heart of hearts”), but not 

through objective evidence. Op. 27. Because the Board used 

subjective intent to “shed meaningful light on” “the degree 

and nature of his disloyalty,” Op. 27, the court majority 

believes the Board’s analysis was consistent with Hormel, 

which the majority characterizes as “establish[ing] that an 

employee of course cannot disclaim an action that rings out as 

disloyal to all the world by contending that he in fact did not 

intend to act disloyally.” Op. 25.

2

But, Hormel cannot be read, as the majority does, to 

permit consideration of employee intent through objective 

evidence. Hormel reversed a Board decision that took 

precisely that approach. See 301 NLRB at 87 (finding a lack 

of “any ostensible evidence of their support of a boycott”) 

(emphasis added). The Hormel ALJ gauged the employee’s 

“actual boycott motivation” (intent) by marshalling a litany of 

objective evidence on both sides, see id. at 84, which was 

adopted in full by the Board, along with the rest of the ALJ’s 

recommended Order. Our opinion in Hormel recited the 

ALJ’s consideration of this evidence. See 962 F.2d at 1065-

66. Based on these objective indicia of intent, the ALJ 

concluded “the evidence is actually very weak that [the 

employee] ever personally embraced a boycott.”3

 301 NLRB 

 2 The majority attempts to cabin Hormel factually too, claiming that 

its “sole” disloyalty analysis dealt with “post-dispute conduct.” Op. 

24. One of the Board’s many hedges describes this 

characterization—it is not “wholly incommensurate” with the facts, 

but it is not the full story. Hormel is clear that the post-dispute 

consumer boycott of Hormel’s products was an “exten[sion]” of 

labor dispute activity. See 962 F.2d at 1063.

3 Among this serial accounting of objective evidence, the ALJ listed 

one “purely subjective” indication of the employee’s intent. He 

observed: “[The employee] has testified relatedly, and I find 

credibly, that he didn’t believe in the effectiveness of the boycott.” 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 49 of 68
10

at 87. Put differently, the evidence didn’t show the employee 

intended to disparage Hormel, and thus his discharge was 

unlawful. We rejected that conclusion. To us, the mere fact 

of the employee’s presence at the boycott was enough to 

justify his termination.

Significantly, the Hormel court didn’t reverse merely 

because it disagreed with the Board’s weighing of competing 

indicia of intent, a result that would have justified the 

majority’s view that Hormel blessed examination of intent 

through objective evidence. If so, we simply could have said 

the Board downplayed what we saw as the most obvious 

indicia of intent: Langemeier’s presence at the rally. No, our 

rationale was more fundamental. We rejected the Board’s 

entire approach, concluding it was not “a permissible 

construction of the NLRA” because it “circumscribe[d]” the 

employer’s right to fire disloyal employees. Hormel, 962 

F.2d at 1065; see also id. (“The Board’s subjective approach 

does not, however, entail a permissible construction of the 

NLRA because it is inconsistent with the statutory policy of 

preserving the employer’s right to discharge an employee for 

disloyalty.”). Where the Board sought objective evidence of 

intent, we sought objective evidence of disparagement. Intent 

was irrelevant. All that mattered was that the employee 

attended the boycott (without expressly disclaiming support 

for it). The discharge was lawful because “any reasonable 

observer would have to infer” that conduct furthered a 

disloyal action (the boycott). Id. at 1066. It did not matter 

 

301 NLRB at 84. However, the Hormel court never cited this; the 

opinion instead seems to encompass all of the evidence bearing on 

whether the employee “personally embraced” the boycott.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 50 of 68
11

why Langemeier participated; only that he did in fact 

participate.4

Thus, the Mastec Board’s opinion is virtually 

indistinguishable from the one we reversed in Hormel. Just as 

the Board claims it relied on “objective criteria” to gauge 

whether MasTec technicians “intended to inflict . . . harm” on 

the companies or “withheld information in order to mislead 

the viewing public,” the Hormel ALJ sought to gauge the 

employee’s “actual boycott motivation” by examining 

“ostensible evidence.” In each case, the Board found the 

termination unlawful due to a lack of evidence that the 

employees intended to disparage or harm their employers. 

Assuring us that its examination drew on objective rather than 

subjective indicia doesn’t magically sanitize an inquiry that 

should have disregarded intent in the first place. No matter 

how objective the indicia, they are by the Board’s admission 

still probative of the technicians’ subjective intent. That 

inquiry is, according to our binding opinion in Hormel, barred 

by the NLRA. 

By dismissing Hormel based on irrelevant and incorrect 

distinctions, the majority has, inappropriately, confined 

Hormel to its specific facts, and severely weakened the 

important protections afforded to employers through the 

second prong of the Jefferson Standard-inspired test. 

Unfortunately, sacrificing circuit precedent is not enough to 

save the Board’s result—the majority must also ensure that 

not even the Supreme Court is allowed to stand in the way of 

the Fourth Branch.

 4 Perhaps there is some intent component to acting in furtherance of 

the boycott. Hormel may not have been able to fire the employee if 

he was sleepwalking or totally unaware of the purpose of the event.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 51 of 68
12

Nothing in Jefferson Standard supports an analysis of 

“flagrant” disloyalty contingent upon subjective intent. 

Indeed, nothing in Jefferson Standard suggests terminable 

disloyalty must be “flagrant.” Yet, the majority gives 

Jefferson Standard a dress-down similar to the one Hormel

received: death by incorrect and irrelevant distinction. 

First, the incorrect distinction: After citing the two-part 

test for dischargeable disloyalty inspired by Jefferson 

Standard (protecting employees from discharge when their 

conduct is (1) related to an ongoing labor dispute and (2) not

sufficiently disloyal), the majority claims Jefferson Standard

is in “contrast” with this case because it only dealt with the 

first prong. Op. 18 (“In Jefferson Standard, the handbill in 

question fell outside the Act’s protection because it simply 

attacked the quality of the company’s product without 

indicating any connection to the ongoing employment 

controversy.”). This is mistaken. 

Jefferson Standard “agree[d]” the employees did not

satisfy the second prong. See 346 U.S. at 472 (“[T]he 

handbill [w]as a demonstration of such detrimental disloyalty 

as to provide ‘cause’ for” termination). Still, the majority 

insists “Jefferson Standard had no occasion to address the 

[second prong].” Op. 19. But not only did Jefferson 

Standard have “occasion” to address the second prong (see 

above), it said the employees’ disloyalty rendered irrelevant 

any satisfaction of the first prong. See 346 U.S. at 477-78 

(“Even if the attack were to be treated, as the Board has not 

treated it, as a concerted activity wholly or partly within the 

scope of those mentioned within § 7 [of the NLRA], the 

means used by the technicians in conducting the attack have 

deprived the attackers of the protection of that section, when 

read in the light and context of the purpose of the Act.”)

(emphasis added). The majority “reads that sentence to 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 52 of 68
13

pertain to the first-step inquiry, not the second step.” Op. 19. 

By this, I take the majority to mean, since the handbill failed 

to “indicate a connection to an ongoing labor dispute . . . the 

handbill . . . would have been deemed unprotected [by the 

Court] even if the Board had found otherwise,” id (emphasis 

omitted). This makes no sense. If the handbill did not 

“indicate a connection” to the ongoing labor dispute, then 

how could the Board have possibly concluded it satisfied the 

first prong? The majority provides no answer.

The logical conclusions from Jefferson Standard are: (1) 

the handbill was sufficiently disloyal to merit termination; (2) 

the Board did not decide whether satisfying the first prong 

would affect the employer’s right to terminate; and (3) even if 

the Board found the first prong satisfied, the “means,” i.e., the 

handbill’s disparaging contents, were sufficiently disloyal to 

merit termination. Sadly, none of these conclusions are clear 

after today’s decision (tellingly, the majority cites the Board’s 

subsequent precedent to justify its reading, not Jefferson 

Standard, see Op. 19). 

The framework endorsed by the incorrect distinctions 

with Jefferson Standard and Hormel makes it impossible for 

disloyal and disparaging employee behavior to be the basis 

for termination, so long as it is connected to an ongoing labor 

dispute. Indeed, in endorsing the Board’s examination of the 

technicians’ subjective intent, the majority goes so far as to 

accept the “relat[ion]” itself as valid evidence undermining 

any finding of disloyalty.5

 See Op. 22, 16. Going forward, it 

 5 The majority attempts to also relegate Hormel and another of our 

precedents, Endicott Interconnect Techs., Inc. v. NLRB, 453 F.3d 

532 (D.C. Cir. 2006), into the same first prong box it places

Jefferson Standard. See Op. 24-28. But it beggars belief to 

conclude that Hormel and Endicott do not bear upon dischargeable 

disloyalty because the relationship with an ongoing labor dispute 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 53 of 68
14

is difficult to see how employee behavior could satisfy the 

test’s first prong and nonetheless still fail the second. This is 

the paradigmatic case, but the court sides with the employees 

anyway.

2.

Now, the majority’s irrelevant distinction with Jefferson 

Standard: The court accepts the Board’s rule that only

“flagrantly disloyal” and “wholly incommensurate” behavior 

is unprotected. The majority claims this rule follows from 

Jefferson Standard. In reality, however, the majority 

transforms the recounting of terminable disloyalty in some 

cases into a requirement for terminable disloyalty in all 

cases.6

 The net result is an artificial narrowing of terminable 

disloyalty. 

Even before the pro-employer Taft-Hartley amendments 

were added to the NLRA, the Supreme Court recognized the 

Act protected an employer’s right of discharge. Writing for 

 

was not met. The test contains two prongs that must both be met 

for the employee to be protected—failing to meet either one means 

the employee does not enjoy NLRA protection (making the 

majority’s frequent characterizations of these prongs as “steps”

inappropriate). There is no need, therefore, to establish a 

relationship between the employee’s activity and an ongoing labor 

dispute if disloyalty is proved. In fact, Endicott expressly did not 

decide the first prong and nevertheless found disloyalty justifying 

discharge. See 453 F.3d at 537 n.5; id. at 538 (Henderson, J., 

concurring).

6 In fact, this is the first time any circuit court in the country has 

commented on, let alone accepted, this language. Our previous 

opinions cite only the Board’s original formulation of the rule, that 

the conduct is “not so disloyal, reckless, or maliciously untrue as to 

lose the Act’s protection.” See, e.g., Endicott, 453 F.3d at 537.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 54 of 68
15

the Court in 1937, Chief Justice Hughes admonished the 

Board not to use its authority as “a pretext for interference 

with the right of discharge when that right is exercised for 

other reasons than [] intimidation and coercion.” NLRB v. 

Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 46 (1937). 

Quoting this language, the Jefferson Standard Court declared 

that the principle that “disloyalty is adequate cause for 

discharge is plain enough,” 346 U.S. at 475, and that “[t]here 

is no more elemental cause for discharge . . . than disloyalty,” 

id. at 472.7

 That right doesn’t dissolve as soon as a labor 

dispute arises. See id. at 477–78 (“Even if the attack were to 

be treated . . . as a concerted activity . . . the means used . . . 

have deprived the attackers of the protection of [the Act].”). 

Employees may engage in concerted activity; however, the 

NLRA doesn’t immunize disloyal behavior. But see Op. 21. 

Jefferson Standard itself confirms this point. When 

commenting that the nature of the employees’ disloyalty 

would be terminable even if it were connected to an ongoing 

labor dispute, the Court cites a wide range of behavior. See

346 U.S. at 478 n.13. From assault to failing to make 

deliveries to avoid crossing a picket line, see id., the varying 

forms of disloyalty cited by Jefferson Standard debunk the 

notion that only “flagrant” disloyalty can trigger the “plain” 

right of discharge.8

 7 The Court’s “plain” and “elemental” descriptors for “the right of 

discharge” for disloyalty, and its treatment of the right as pre-dating 

the NLRA, evince that Act’s harmony with the longstanding 

common law duty of loyalty from which the right to discharge for 

disloyalty follows. Our insistence in Hormel on “an objective test 

of disloyalty” under the NLRA confirms the same. See 962 F.2d at 

1065 (citing THE COMMON LAW to say that “[a]cts should be 

judged by their tendency under the known circumstances, not by the 

actual intent which accompanies them”) (emphasis added). 8 To be sure, the Court didn’t explain why the particular means used 

by these employees deprived them of the Act’s protection. But that 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 55 of 68
16

But, something very strange happened after Jefferson 

Standard. The Board gradually weakened the very right the 

Court went out of its way to vindicate. Presently, employers 

may only fire “flagrantly disloyal” employees whose behavior 

is “wholly incommensurate with any grievances they might 

have.” See Mastec, 357 NLRB at 108 (emphasis added). 

Anything less than flagrant disloyalty must be taken on the 

chin.

This rule is “wholly incompatible” with Jefferson

Standard’s insistence that an employer’s right to fire disloyal 

employees is “elemental” and “plain.” Twenty-two years 

after Jefferson Standard, the gloss that would ultimately 

swallow the plain text made its first appearance—not as a 

rule, but as a description of a specific employee’s conduct 

toward his employer. Firehouse Restaurant, 220 NLRB 818, 

825 (1975). Three years later, the language re-appeared, 

again not as a rule but this time as an observation about the 

kinds of cases in which the Board had found concerted but 

disloyal activity lost NLRA protection. See Veeder-Root Co., 

237 NLRB 1175, 1177 (1978) (observing that in cases of 

 

does not mean we must infer their means were therefore “flagrant.” 

The Board’s prior statement of the disloyalty analysis, as we 

approved in Endicott, strikes me as quite reasonable. See 453 F.3d 

at 537 (approving that the concerted activity be “not so disloyal . . . 

as to lose the Act’s protection”) (emphasis added). There seems to 

be a significant difference between “flagrant” disloyalty and 

conduct that is “so” disloyal it is unprotected. The majority 

concludes otherwise, equating them as “various formulations.” See

Op. 22. But if that is true, and “flagrant” disloyalty is thus a 

requirement stemming from Jefferson Standard, then the majority 

should explain, for example, how, in light of today’s decision, an 

employee’s failure to make obliged deliveries to avoid crossing a 

picket line constitutes “flagrant” disloyalty. See Jefferson 

Standard, 346 U.S. at 478 n.13. 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 56 of 68
17

flagrant, wholly incommensurate disloyalty, “the Board has 

held disciplinary action to be justified”). The language was 

more explicitly adopted as a guiding standard one year later in 

Richboro Community Mental Health Council, when the Board 

rejected an employer’s disloyalty argument for not meeting 

the historical standard described in Veeder-Root. 242 NLRB 

1267, 1267-68 (1979) (holding that while “flagrantly disloyal, 

wholly incommensurate” conduct can forfeit NLRA 

protection, “such is hardly the case here”). From description 

to observation to standard, the Board slowly, surely chipped 

away at a right of employers the Supreme Court had made a 

deliberate effort to protect.

Finally, in the decision we’re reviewing today, the 

Board’s gradual, decades-long evisceration of the employer’s 

discharge right culminated in its strongest invocation of this 

language yet. For the first time, the Board made its 

requirement of flagrant and wholly incommensurate 

disloyalty explicit by framing it in conditional terms: “The 

Board has stated that it will not find a public statement 

unprotected unless it is ‘flagrantly disloyal, wholly 

incommensurate with any grievances which they might 

have.’” Mastec, 357 NLRB at 108.9

 9 For what it’s worth, I find no support in the NLRB’s decision for 

that statement. Prior to Mastec, the Board had never “stated that it 

will not find a public statement unprotected unless” it is “flagrantly 

disloyal” and “wholly incommensurate.” The decision it cites for 

this proposition, Five Star Transportation, Inc., stated only that it 

will consider whether “the attitude of the employees is flagrantly 

disloyal [and] wholly incommensurate . . . .” 349 NLRB 42, 45 

(2007). Not a single NLRB decision characterizes the “flagrantly 

disloyal”/“wholly incommensurate” language in the conditional 

language employed in Mastec. The Board’s statement that it had 

stated the rule in conditional terms is incorrect.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 57 of 68
18

What we are confronted with, then, are two incompatible 

propositions. On the one hand, the Supreme Court insists that 

an employer’s right to discharge an employee for acts of 

disloyalty is “elemental” and “plain enough.” On the other, 

the NLRB cautions that where concerted activity is 

concerned, the employers’ right extends only to acts of 

flagrant disloyalty. The NLRB’s modifier is wholly absent 

from, and incompatible with, Jefferson Standard. While I 

recognize the Board’s special authority to “appl[y] the general 

provisions of the Act to the complexities of industrial life,” 

NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U.S. 221, 236 (1963), that 

authority should not permit it to erode Supreme Court 

precedent—especially when that precedent interprets the 

agency’s authorizing statutes.

B.

The majority also upholds the Board’s determination that 

the technicians’ statements were not “maliciously untrue.” 

The “maliciously untrue” standard is another invention of the 

Board, designed especially to deal with a particular subspecies of disloyalty: false statements. Under this standard, 

false statements are unprotected if “made with knowledge of 

their falsity or with reckless disregard for their truth or 

falsity.” Mastec, 357 NLRB at 107.

The Companies charge the technicians with conveying at 

least three maliciously untrue sentiments: (1) the technicians 

were required to lie; (2) they were seriously encouraged to tell 

customers their receivers would “blow up” if not connected; 

and (3) customers are charged per connection. The Board 

rejected the Companies’ claims, and the majority now 

concludes substantial evidence supported that determination.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 58 of 68
19

I disagree. In my view, the Board’s determinations with 

respect to at least the first two sets of statements are 

unsupported by substantial evidence. 

1.

In their interview, the technicians falsely stated they were 

required to lie to customers. One technician said, “If we don’t 

lie to the customers, we get back charged for it.” Following 

the reporter’s observation that “It’s either lie or lose money,” 

another said, “We don’t have a choice.” Even if one accepts 

the court’s conclusion that the technicians were “essentially 

told to lie,” that fact does not justify their additional assertions 

either that they had no “choice” but to lie or that if they didn’t 

“lie to the customers [they’d] get back charged for it.” The 

technicians who made this assertion knew it was false, their 

response validated the reporter’s characterization—“[i]t’s 

either lie or lose money”–and it unquestionably disparaged 

the reputation of the Companies.

The key fact, that at no point in any of the training did 

MasTec threaten back charges for technicians who refused to 

lie, is one the technicians must have known. That, of course, 

would have been absurd. It is not “lying” that triggers back 

charges, but rather the failure to convince a customer to 

connect. Even if lying might be one way to sell a connection, 

it is obviously not the only way. An improved sales pitch 

alone could do the trick. After all, customers receive certain 

benefits from connecting, such as remote control pay-perview, caller-ID integration, and access to system updates.

Sure, as the majority suggests, had the technicians 

explained that getting a 50% connection rate is difficult and 

that sometimes they felt as though lying was the only way to 

avoid back charges, this would be a very different story. That 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 59 of 68
20

(truthful) description would have fairly and still 

sympathetically illuminated the nature of their grievance, 

which was that complying with MasTec’s policies was so 

difficult that lying seemed an inescapable temptation, one 

MasTec even encouraged. But what they actually said paints 

a far more damning picture of the Companies. The fact that 

they chose to tell a blatant lie, particularly where the truth was 

more than adequate to the task, suggests to me their decision 

was “reasonably calculated to harm the compan[ies’ 

respective] reputation[s].” Jefferson Standard, 346 U.S. at 

471. 

Hedging, the Board retreated to what has become its 

favorite haven; one the majority has ensured will remain safe. 

“In any event,” the Board explains, any inaccuracies are 

excusable since “[t]here is no basis in the record to find that 

the technicians knowingly and maliciously withheld that 

information in order to mislead the viewing public.” Mastec, 

357 NLRB at 107 (emphasis added). The majority says it 

“cannot set aside the Board’s findings on this issue as 

unsupported by substantial evidence.” Op. 35. But there is an 

obvious reason to set aside that finding: it is not in accordance 

with the law as established by Hormel’s explicit rejection of a 

subjective disloyalty test. The purpose for which these 

technicians withheld information hardly matters at all. 

Whether it was to mislead the viewing public, or merely for 

kicks and giggles, all that matters is whether they knowingly 

conveyed disparaging information they knew was false. 

Because they clearly did, I respectfully dissent.

2.

Moreover, I would also conclude the Board erred in 

concluding the technicians’ repetition of a joking suggestion 

as though it were serious was not problematic. In training, a 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 60 of 68
21

MasTec supervisor jokingly suggested the technicians should 

tell the customers their receiver will blow up if it is not 

connected to a phone line. Martinez, a former technician, 

repeated the joke on the newscast as though it were a serious 

suggestion. The exchange proceeded as follows:

Journalist: Want to avoid a deduction on your 

paycheck? Well, according to this group, supervisors 

have ordered them to do or say whatever it takes.

Martinez: Tell the customer whatever you have to tell 

them. Tell them if these phone lines are not 

connected the receiver will blow up.

Journalist: You’ve been told to tell customers that . . .

Martinez: We’ve been told to say that. Whatever it 

takes to get that phone line into that receiver.

The specific question before the Board was whether it 

was maliciously untrue to relay these statements without also 

revealing they were made in jest. The answer should have 

been plain enough: omitting the context communicated the 

false impression that the technicians were, in fact, told to tell 

an outrageous lie to customers. Because it was obvious to all 

present that the MasTec supervisor’s suggestion wasn’t 

serious, Martinez knowingly conveyed false information to 

the viewing public.

To be sure, while MasTec technicians were not told to 

mislead customers in this way, they were told to mislead them 

in another way. They were encouraged to tell customers that 

the receiver wouldn’t work unless it was connected to the 

phone line, which was untrue. In the Board’s view, this fact 

sanitizes the lie Martinez told the viewers of Channel 6. 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 61 of 68
22

MasTec may not have actually encouraged technicians to 

warn about receivers blowing up, but because they did 

encourage them to lie in other ways his statements 

“underscored that message” and were therefore not 

maliciously untrue. See Mastec, 357 NLRB at 107.

But just because the technicians were encouraged to 

mislead customers in one way doesn’t justify Martinez’s false 

assertion that the technicians were encouraged to mislead 

customers in this particular way. This “give an inch, take a 

mile” approach assumes (incorrectly) that the effect of the 

two statements would have been the same. For obvious 

reasons, that wouldn’t be so. 

From Martinez’s actual assertion, viewers were left with 

an impression that MasTec and DirecTV are so profit-hungry 

that they instructed their technicians to tell outrageous, fearmongering lies. Indeed, to understand that fear mongering 

was the interview’s purpose we need look no further than the 

segment’s summation. See Op. 11 (quoting Alvarez 

(reporting) to say “the attorney general’s office is looking into 

this newest issue so we’ll, of course, keep you posted”) 

(emphasis added). 

If evidence of subjective intent did have any relevance 

here, the reporter’s sensationalizing points us to the smoking 

gun (which the MasTec Board assiduously ignored): the fact 

that the technicians purposely chose a media forum that 

focused almost exclusively on consumer fraud. Absent an 

intention to harm the reputation of the Companies and warn 

consumers not to do business with them, the Channel 6 

program would have no interest in airing this segment. This 

is exactly what the ALJ—the initial fact finder—concluded, 

even when applying the Board’s own “flagrantly disloyal” 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 62 of 68
23

standard:

10 that employees’ desire to undermine the 

Companies’ reputation “overshadowed the labor dispute.” 

See APPX019 (“[T]hese statements [that the technicians were 

instructed or encouraged to lie to customers] . . . apparently 

enticed the TV station to even do a story about Respondents’ 

business.”). 

 Had Martinez chosen instead to tell the truth, the 

viewers would still have been presented with a damning 

picture of these companies, but one far less worthy of outrage. 

To be sure, deceptive business practices may aggravate 

consumers. But the more brazen and glaring the deception, 

the more contempt it earns. 

 

Here again, as with the first set, the truth was all the 

technicians needed to achieve their goal of currying public 

sympathy. Choosing instead to hedge their bets with a few 

malicious falsehoods, Martinez launched “a sharp, public, 

disparaging attack upon . . . the companies’ . . . business 

policies, in a manner reasonably calculated to harm the 

company’s reputation and reduce its income.” See Jefferson 

Standard, 346 U.S. at 471.

3.

More fundamental than my disagreement over what the 

record demonstrates, I question both the relevance and 

propriety of the Board’s “maliciously untrue” framework.

 10 The majority repeatedly notes the Companies do not challenge 

the Board’s standard. See, e.g., Op. 14, 18, 22, 31. Why should 

they? Applying Hormel’s objective standard, the ALJ found for the

Companies even under the Board’s stringent standard. Perhaps the 

majority is suggesting any judicial questioning of the Board’s 

standard is beyond the pale. I hope not. Judicial review should 

mean more than batting cleanup for the administrative state. 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 63 of 68
24

Indeed, it is unclear why the Board is concerned with a 

statement’s malicious falsity at all. Jefferson Standard, the 

supposed inspiration behind this framework, established an 

employer’s right to punish employees for “disloyalty”—or, 

“disparaging attack[s] upon the quality of [their employer’s] 

product and its business policies, in a manner reasonably 

calculated to harm the company’s reputation and reduce its 

income.” 346 U.S. at 471. Determining that a statement is 

“maliciously untrue” is an unnecessary detour, at least as far 

as Jefferson Standard is concerned, because we’d still need to 

decide whether the maliciously untrue statement is 

sufficiently disloyal.

The only way to make sense of this framework is to 

assume the Board treats maliciously false statements as per se

disloyal. Otherwise, there is no need for this separate 

analysis, especially since any time a false statement is 

something less than malicious—which is typical given how 

high a bar that is—the Board nonetheless still must examine 

whether it was “not so disloyal.” But the majority and the 

Board disclaim a per se approach to determining disloyalty. 

See, e.g., Op. 27. In sum, the majority’s approach cannot 

even claim internal logic. 

II.

In a future case where we hopefully restore the precedent 

we gut today, we should require more faithful adherence to 

the equipoise envisioned by the Court in Jefferson Standard. 

A proper view of the NLRA, according to the Court, requires 

proper attention both to the employees’ right to air grievances 

and the employer’s right to punish disloyalty. Thus, restoring 

the original spirit of Jefferson Standard requires carefully 

defining the hallmarks of disloyalty. Fortunately, decisions 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 64 of 68
25

by various courts of appeals and even the NLRB provide 

some useful suggestions.

For instance, we have held employee conduct is disloyal 

when it disparages “the quality of the company’s products and 

its business policies.” Endicott, 453 F.3d at 536. There, the 

employee was terminated for commenting publicly that his 

employer lacked “good ability to manage,” was causing the 

business to “tank[],” and was going to “put it in the dirt,” and 

we upheld the termination as consistent with Jefferson 

Standard. Id. at 537. Conversely, where employee conduct 

did not contain “any remarks or materials disparaging the 

quality of products of the employer,” we concluded such 

conduct did not “bring the case within the rationale of 

[Jefferson Standard].” Allied Indus. Workers, AFL-CIO 

Local Union No. 289 v. NLRB, 476 F.2d 868, 879 (D.C. Cir. 

1973). Thus, where there’s no disparagement of the 

employer’s product or practices, there’s no cause for 

termination.11

Other courts of appeals, as well as the NLRB, have also 

examined the following two factors: (1) “whether the appeal 

to the public concerned primarily working conditions,” and 

(2) “whether it avoided needlessly tarnishing the company’s 

image.” NLRB v. Mount Desert Island Hosp., 695 F.2d 634, 

 11 An important note: nearly every public, concerted activity by 

employees or unions will cause some harm to employers, but that 

“does not alone render them disloyal.” Mohave Elec. Coop., Inc. v. 

NLRB, 206 F.3d 1183, 1189 (D.C. Cir. 2000); see also Five Star 

Transp., Inc. v. NLRB, 522 F.3d 46, 53–54 (1st Cir. 2008) (“Indeed, 

were harm or potential harm to the employer to be the determining 

factor in the Court’s [] protection analysis, it is doubtful that the 

legislative purposes of the Act would ever be realized.”). What 

matters, it seems, is disparagement of the employer’s products or 

business practices, not its labor practices.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 65 of 68
26

640 (1st Cir. 1982); see also Technicolor Gov’t Serv’s, Inc., 

276 NLRB 383, 388 (1985) (holding that “disloyalty” turns 

on whether, in context, “it was necessary to legitimate 

employee ends”). As public, concerted activity will 

inherently cause some harm to an employer’s image, this 

approach suggests that, to avoid acting disloyally, employees 

must be cautious not to harm the employer’s image more than 

is necessary or appropriate.

Another possible test for disloyalty finds expression in 

our en banc decision in Diamond Walnut Growers, Inc. v. 

NLRB, 113 F.3d 1259 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (en banc). Though 

technically implicating a different line of Supreme Court 

precedent (NLRB v. Fleetwood Trailer Co., Inc., 389 U.S. 375 

(1967), not Jefferson Standard), the court’s analysis resonates 

in both. There, an employee was terminated for participating 

in a strike and international boycott of his employer’s product. 

That boycott referred to the employer’s workforce as “‘scabs’ 

who packaged walnuts contaminated with ‘mold, dirt, oil, 

worms and debris.’” Id. at 1261. And in determining whether 

the employer had “substantial justification” for terminating 

the employee, the court considered whether the resolution of 

the underlying labor dispute would remove the taint brought 

on by the employee’s conduct. The court concluded:

“The company’s ability to sell the product, even if the 

strike is subsequently settled, could well be destroyed. 

If a customer becomes apprehensive to bite into 

Diamond’s walnuts because of a concern at finding an 

impurity (even part of a worm), it is unlikely that a 

strike settlement will eliminate that visceral fear.”

Id. at 1267. Because a strike settlement would not likely 

reassure prospective buyers that they can safely snack on 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 66 of 68
27

these walnuts without fear of also chewing into a worm, the 

employer justifiably terminated the employee. 

Each of the foregoing examples suggests that determining 

disloyalty demands investigation into how the labor dispute 

and the disloyal activity fit together. Activities focused on 

working conditions that avoid needlessly tarnishing the 

company’s image will not be deemed “so disloyal” even if 

they cause some harm to the employer’s reputation. But 

when employees get carried away, lose sight of the labor 

dispute, and cross the Rubicon into disparaging their 

employers’ products or business practices or inflicting 

needless or irredeemable damage to their reputation, they 

forfeit the NLRA’s protection. 

In my view, that’s what happened here. The technicians’ 

disloyalty stems from their statements accusing MasTec and 

DirecTV of deceptive business practices. These statements 

display all the hallmark attributes of disloyalty discussed 

above. As in Endicott, what these technicians alleged 

constitutes disparagement of the “quality” of the companies’ 

“business policies.” 453 F.3d at 537. And consistent with 

Diamond Walnut, it is hard to imagine that a resolution of this 

labor dispute would remove the distaste local customers (and 

potential customers) likely have toward these allegedly 

crooked companies. 113 F.3d at 1268. Finally, unlike in 

Mount Desert, the false allegations they hurled at MasTec and 

DirecTV were not “intertwined inextricably with complaints 

of working conditions,” nor were they “necessary to 

effectuate employees’ lawful aims.” 695 F.2d at 640–41. To 

be sure, the employees’ discomfort about lying to customers 

is certainly related to the labor dispute. Again, had their 

public complaints actually focused on what MasTec 

encouraged them to say, there may have been a strong case 

that these statements were necessary to effectuate their lawful 

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 67 of 68
28

aims. But they said none of these things. Rather, their 

statements on the broadcast were confined to false allegations 

that they were required to lie and that they were seriously 

encouraged to tell customers their receivers would blow up if 

they didn’t connect a phone line. By falsely suggesting they 

were required to lie, and to lie so preposterously, they 

“needlessly tarnish[ed]” MasTec and DirecTV’s image. 

Consequently, their termination was justified.

As things stand now under this court’s imprimatur, the 

Board will continue to force employers to endure—and even 

finance—employees who are “working against [their] 

business interest,” Hormel, 962 F.2d at 1065, either because 

the conduct isn’t flagrantly disloyal or the intent behind it 

isn’t objectively discernible. If I’m ever in Orlando, I half 

expect I’d see a commercial along these lines:

“Hi, I’m Rob Lowe, and I have DirecTV.”

“And I’m ‘Channel 6-watching Rob 

Lowe,’ and well, now I have cable.”

I just hope my receiver doesn’t blow up.

USCA Case #11-1294 Document #1636111 Filed: 09/16/2016 Page 68 of 68