Opinion ID: 4561301
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Authority to issue an injunction under the NLGA

Text: Further limiting a court’s authority to issue an injunction in a railway labor dispute is the Norris-LaGuardia Act (“NLGA”). 29 U.S.C. § 108, et seq. Congress enacted the NLGA in 1932 intending to “tak[e] the federal courts out of the labor injunction business.” Jacksonville Bulk Terminals, Inc. v. Int’l Longshoremen’s Ass’n, 457 U.S. 702, 712 (1982) (quoting Marine Cooks & Stewards v. Panama S.S. Co., 362 U.S. 365, 369 (1960)) (emphasis omitted). By narrowing the courts’ jurisdiction to enjoin labor disputes, Congress hoped to stop courts from indiscriminately awarding injunctions against striking employees—a practice that had become commonplace across federal courts. See Nat’l Woodwork Mfrs. Ass’n v. N.L.R.B., 386 U.S. 612, 620 (1967) (stating that “[f]ederal court injunctions freely issued against all manner of strikes and boycotts under rulings that condemned virtually every collective activity of labor as an unlawful restraint of trade”). For example, Section 8 of the NLGA precludes injunctions except where the plaintiff has “ma[d]e every reasonable effort to settle such dispute either by negotiation or with the aid of any available governmental machinery of mediation or voluntary arbitration.” § 108. If the NLGA totally divested the courts of power to issue an injunction, however, the RLA’s mandates would ring hollow. “To accommodate the competing demands of the RLA and the Norris-LaGuardia Act, our cases establish that the Norris-LaGuardia Act does not deprive the federal court of jurisdiction to enjoin compliance with various mandates of the Railway Labor Act.” Burlington N. R.R. Co., 481 U.S. at 445 (citing cases). But this exception is a limited one. “[W]hen a violation of a specific mandate of the RLA is shown, courts should hesitate to fix upon the injunctive remedy . . . unless that remedy alone can effectively guard the plaintiff’s right.” Id. at 446. 13 Case: 20-10162 Document: 00515544398 Page: 14 Date Filed: 08/28/2020 No. 20-10162