Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1449_d9eh.pdf
Page Number: 18.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

3 

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment 

instance to the [NLRB].”  359 U. S., at 242, 244–245.  To do 
otherwise, it feared, “would create potential frustration of
national purposes” and invite “the danger of state interfer-
ence with national policy.”  Id., at 244–245. 

Justice Harlan concurred in the result, warning that the
majority’s  rule  would  “reduc[e]  to  the  vanishing  point”
States’  “power  to  redress  wrongful  acts  in  the  labor  field”
and provide any “effective remedy under their own laws for 
. . . tortious conduct.”  Id., at 253–254.  The years since have 
borne out that warning.  Garmon elevates “even the remot-
est possibility of conflict,” thereby “overstat[ing ] the likeli-
hood and significance of conflicts and . . . set[ting] up an un-
real  goal  of  doctrinal  and  factual  harmony.”    L.  Jaffe, 
Primary Jurisdiction, 77 Harv. L. Rev. 1037,  1053 (1964).
In  effect,  “Garmon  doctrine  completely  pre-empts  state-
court jurisdiction unless the Board determines that the dis-
puted  conduct  is  neither  protected  nor  prohibited  by  the 
[NLRA].”  Sears,  Roebuck  &  Co.  v.  Carpenters,  436  U. S. 
180, 199, n. 29 (1978). 

The majority opinion today underscores the strangeness 
of  the  Garmon  regime.  Here,  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United States reassures a state court of its power to adju-
dicate a state-law tort claim.  The Court does so, not based 
on its own judgment that federal law does not pre-empt the
claim,  but  because  the  NLRB’s  existing  precedents  ade-
quately remove any “[c]lou[d]” over the matter.  359 U. S., 
at 246.  But, if the Board’s precedents left the matter “ar-
guable” (and the NLRA did not plainly dictate an answer),
then  the  state  courts  would  be  “ousted”  of  jurisdiction. 
Longshoremen v. Davis, 476 U. S. 380, 396 (1986).  The up-
shot  of  this  approach  appears  to  be  that  the  scope  of  the 
NLRA’s  pre-emption  of  state-court  jurisdiction  over  state 
claims  is  defined—not  by  the  statutory  text—but  by  “pe-
numbra[s]”  that  wax  and  wane  as  the  Board  develops,  or 
declines to develop, its own carefully insulated common law