Source: https://openjurist.org/339/us/470
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 10:25:04+00:00

Document:
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, CHAUFFEURS, WAREHOUSEMEN & HELPERS UNION, LOCAL 309, et al.
HANKE et al. AUTOMOBILE DRIVERS & DEMONSTRATORS LOCAL UNION NO. 882 et al. v. CLINE.
Local 882 reached a new agreement with the Independent Automobile Dealers Association in April, 1948. As a condition to removal of the picket line, the union demanded that Cline agree to keep his business closed after 1 p.m. on Saturdays and to hire a member of the union as a salesman to be compensated at the rate of seven percent of the gross sales regardless of whether they were made by Cline or this employee. Suit by Cline to restrain patrolling of his business resulted in a permanent injunction against the union and its officers—Cline waived his claim for damages—and the Supreme Court of Washington, relying on its decision in the Hanke case, affirmed. 33 Wash.2d 665, 207 P.2d 216.
Here, as in Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U.S. 460, 70 S.Ct. 718, we must start with the fact that while picketing has an ingredient of communication it cannot dogmatically be equated with the constitutionally protected freedom of speech. Our decisions reflect recognition that picketing is 'indeed a hybrid.' Freund, On Understanding the Supreme Court 18 (1949). See also Jaffe, In Defense of the Supreme Court's Picketing Doctrine, 41 Mich.L.Rev. 1037 (1943). The effort in the cases has been to strike a balance between the constitutional protection of the element of communication in picketing and 'the power of the State to set the limits of permissible contest open to industrial combatants.' Thornhill v. State of Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 104, 60 S.Ct. 736, 745, 84 L.Ed. 1093.1 A State's judgment on striking such a balance is of course subject to the limitations of the Fourteenth Amendment. Embracing as such a judgment does, however, a State's social and economic policies, which in turn depend on knowledge and appraisal of local social and economic factors, such judgment on these matters comes to this Court bearing a weighty title of respect.
Whether to prefer to union or a self-employer in such a situation or to seek partial recognition of both interests, and, if so, by what means to secure such accommodation, obviously presents to a State serious problems. There are no sure answers, and the best available solution is likely to be experimental and tentative, and always subject to the control of the popular will. That the solution of these perplexities is a challenge to wisdom and not a command of the Constitution is the significance of Senn v. Tile Layers Protective Union, 301 U.S. 468, 57 S.Ct. 857, 81 L.Ed. 1229. Senn, a self-employed tile layer who occasionally hired other tile layers to assist him, was picketed when he refused to yield to the union demand that he no longer work himself at his trade. The Wisconsin court found the situation to be within the State's anti-injunction statute and denied relief. In rejecting the claim that the restriction upon Senn's freedom was a denial of his liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment, this Court held that it lay in the domain of policy for Wisconsin to permit the picketing: 'Whether it was wise for the state to permit the unions to do so is a question of its public policy—not our concern.' 301 U.S. at page 481, 57 S.Ct. at page 863.
It is not for us to pass judgment on cases not now before us. But when one considers that issues not unlike those that are here have been similarly viewed by other States4 and by the Congress of the United States,5 we cannot conclude that Washington, in holding the picketing in these cases to be for an unlawful object, has struck a balance so inconsistent with rooted traditions of a free people that it must be found an unconstitutional choice. Mindful as we are that a phase of picketing is communication, we cannot find that Washington has offended the Constitution.
We need not repeat the considerations to which we adverted in Hughes v. Superior Court that make it immaterial, in respect to the constitutional issue before us, that the policy of Washington was expressed by its Supreme Court rather than by its legislature. The Fourteenth Amendment leaves the States free to distribute the powers of government as they will between their legislative and judicial branches. Dreyer v. People of State of Illinois, 187 U.S. 71, 83—84, 23 S.Ct. 28, 32, 47 L.Ed. 79; Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 211 U.S. 210, 225, 29 S.Ct. 67, 69, 53 L.Ed. 150. '(R)ights under that amendment turn on the power of the state, no matter by what organ it acts.' State of Missouri v. Dockery, 191 U.S. 165, 170-171, 24 S.Ct. 53, 54, 48 L.Ed. 133, 63 L.R.A. 571.
What was actually decided in American Federation of Labor v. Swing, 312 U.S. 321, 61 S.Ct. 568, 85 L.Ed. 855; Bakery & Pastry Drivers & Helpers Local 802 v. Wohl, 315 U.S. 769, 62 S.Ct. 816, 86 L.Ed. 1178, and Cafeteria Employees Union, Local 302, v. Angelos, 320 U.S. 293, 64 S.Ct. 126, 88 L.Ed. 58, does not preclude us from upholding Washington's power to make the choice of policy she has here made. In those cases we held only that a State could not proscribe picketing merely by setting artifical bounds, unreal in the light of modern circumstances to what constitutes an industrial relationship or a labor dispute.6 See Cox, Some Aspects of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Harv.L.Rev. 1, 30 (1947). The power of a State to declare a policy in favor of self-employers and to make conduct restrictive of self-employment unlawful was not considered in those cases. Indeed in Wohl this Court expressly noted that the State courts had not found that the picketing there condemned was for a defined unlawful object. 315 U.S. 774, 62 S.Ct. 818, 86 L.Ed. 1178.
When an injunction of a State court comes before us it comes not as an independent collocation of words. It is defined and confined by the opinion of the State court. The injunctions in these two cases are to be judged here with all the limitations that are infused into their terms by the opinions of the Washington Supreme Court on the basis of which the judgments below come before us. So read, the injunctions are directed solely against picketing for the ends defined by the parties before the Washington court and this Court. To treat the injunctions otherwise—to treat them, that is, outside the scope of the issues which they represent—is to deal with a case that is not here and was not before the Washington court. In considering an injunction against picketing recently, we had occasion to reject a similar claim of infirmity derived not from the record but from unreality. What we then said is pertinent now: 'What is before us * * * is not the order as an isolated, self-contained writing but the order with the gloss of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin upon it.' Hotel & Restaurant Employees' International Alliance, Local No. 122, v. Wisconsin E.R.B., 315 U.S. 437, 441, 62 S.Ct. 706, 708, 86 L.Ed. 946. Our affirmance of these injunctions is in conformity with the reading derived from the Washington court's opinions. If astuteness may discover argumentative excess in the scope of the injunctions beyond what we constitutionally justify by this opinion, it will be open to petitioners to raise the matter, which they have not raised here, when the cases on remand reach the Washington court.
Mr. Justice BLACK dissents for substantially the reasons given in his dissent in Carpenters & Joiners Union of America, Local No. 213, v. Ritter's Cafe, 315 U.S. 722, 729—732, 62 S.Ct. 807, 810—812, 86 L.Ed. 1143.
Of course, the true significance of particular phrases in Senn appears only when they are examined in their context: 'Clearly the means which the statute authorizes—picketing and publicity—are not prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. Members of a union might, without special statutory authorization by a state, make known the facts of a labor dispute, for freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. The state may, in the exercise of its police power, regulate the methods and means of publicity as well as the use of public streets.' 301 U.S. at page 478, 57 S.Ct. at page 862.
As to the Court's duty to restrict general expressions in opinions in earlier cases to their specific context, see Cohens v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 399—400, 5 L.Ed. 257; Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U.S. 126, 132—133, 65 S.Ct. 165, 168, 89 L.Ed. 118.

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