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Page Number: 35.0

14 

GLACIER NORTHWEST, INC. v. TEAMSTERS 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

nature  of  the  Garmon  assessment  and  what  it  requires.
The court asks, first of all, whether the party invoking Gar-
mon has “advance[d] an interpretation of the [NLRA] that 
is not plainly contrary to its language and that has not been 
‘authoritatively rejected’ by the courts or the Board.”  Davis, 
476 U. S., at 395.  This inquiry involves merely comparing 
the  union’s  claim  about  the  scope  of  its  protection  to  the
broad  protective  language  of  the  statute  and  deciding
whether the union’s interpretation has already been defin-
itively rejected either by courts or by the Board. 

The second task is to determine whether the party invok-
ing Garmon has “put forth enough evidence to enable the 
court to find that the Board reasonably could uphold a claim 
based on such an interpretation.”  Davis, 476 U. S., at 395. 
Again, this is not an invitation to supplant the Board’s fact-
finding  role  or  to  usurp  the  authority  that  Congress  has 
given the Board to make the initial underlying protected-
or-unprotected  determination.    Rather,  the  point  of  this
part  of  the  Garmon  assessment  is  simply  to  determine
whether it is arguable that the Board—in the exercise of its 
discretion to develop labor law and aided by its investiga-
tion into the facts—could conclude that the strike conduct 
at issue is protected by the NLRA.  See 359 U. S., at 245. 

Thus, consistent with a statutory scheme that gives pri-
macy to the agency’s expertise, a court’s task under Garmon 
is unmistakably modest.  It must merely assess whether, in 
light  of  existing  law  and  the  evidence  that  has  been 
amassed related to this strike, it is possible that the union 
could prevail before the Board.  Put another way, instead of 
stepping  into  the  Board’s  shoes  as  primary  factfinder,  or
even prognosticating about what the Board is likely to de-
cide concerning the extent of NLRA coverage, a court that
stands down upon a proper Garmon analysis has simply de-
termined (1) that existing law does not plainly and author-
itatively  prohibit  the  strike  conduct  at  issue, and  (2)  that
evidence  exists  concerning  how  the  strike  was  conducted