Opinion ID: 3033697
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Supreme Court’s Refinement of Garmon in

Text: Sears In Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. San Diego County Dist. Council of Carpenters, 436 U.S. 180 (1978), the Supreme Court refined its Garmon preemption doctrine in the context of an employer’s common law trespassing suit against picketing union members where the picketing was “arguably — but not definitely — prohibited or protected by federal law.” Sears, 436 U.S. at 182. Sears divided the inquiry into two related but distinct questions: whether the state court’s jurisdiction over the trespassing claim was preempted (1) by the arguably prohibited nature of the picketing, or (2) by its arguably protected nature. As to whether the union’s picketing was arguably prohibited by the NLRA, Sears articulated a relatively straightforward “primary jurisdiction” test: if the claim considered by the state tribunal is identical to one that could be presented to the NLRB, the state’s jurisdiction is preempted. Id. at 197, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE v. LOCKYER 12219 201; see also Belknap, 463 U.S. at 511 (applying primary jurisdiction test to state regulation of arguably prohibited conduct). As to whether the picketing was arguably protected by the NLRA, the Court went beyond the primary jurisdiction test to address additional federal supremacy concerns — whether, despite the lack of identicality between issues the state court and NLRB might consider, preemption was warranted to protect against the risk of “misinterpretation of [the NLRA] and the consequent prohibition of protected conduct.” Sears, 436 U.S. at 203. We employed this “primary jurisdiction plus” approach in Radcliffe v. Rainbow Const. Co., 254 F.3d 772, 786 (9th Cir. 2001) (holding that state jurisdiction over claims by union members against employer for false arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution were not preempted under Garmon).3
The parties do not dispute that the NLRB has no interest in resolving the central controversy that a state court would have to resolve in enforcing AB 1889 — whether state funds were used to “assist, promote, or deter union organizing.” The focus of a lawsuit under AB 1889 would not be on whether employer speech was proper or improper, but on whether state funds were used to support that speech. Far from being identical to the kind of question the NLRB might consider, a suit under the California statute would be an accounting for the employer’s possible misuse of funds, with no attention at all to the nature of the advocacy itself. The Chamber of Commerce makes two arguments in response. It first argues that a state court enforcing AB 1889 would in some instances have to determine whether a union was a “labor organization” under § 16647, an area that it 3 In Radcliffe, defendants argued that “the validity of plaintiffs’ claims . . . turns on whether the union activities carried on by the plaintiffs were . . . protected by § 7 of the NLRA.” Id. at 785. 12220 CHAMBER OF COMMERCE v. LOCKYER claims is reserved to the NLRB under Marine Engineers Beneficial Ass’n v. Interlake Steamship Co., 370 U.S. 173 (1962). But even if the state court had to make such a determination, it would be relevant only to the ultimate question of whether an employer spent state funds on advocacy, not whether the advocacy violated the NLRA. We have previously rejected an argument that the incidental determination by a state court of whether persons were engaged “in lawful union activity” was sufficient to create Garmon preemption, where the focus of a state proceeding was on “state concerns of accommodating such union activity with the state-law rights of private property.” Radcliffe, 254 F.3d at 786. Moreover, AB 1889 is not comparable to the Minnesota statute at issue in Marine Engineers, under which a state law determination that certain groups were not labor organizations permitted the state court to regulate picketing and other activities identical to those that could have been raised before the NLRB. Marine Engineers, 370 U.S. at 176. The Chamber of Commerce also argues that because AB 1889 restricts an employer’s ability to “influence” its employees using state funds, see § 16645(a), California courts would effectively be deciding whether employers had improperly acted under § 8(a) of the NLRA “to restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights contained in [§ 7 of the NLRA].” 29 U.S.C. § 158(a) (NLRA § 8(a)). However, were the NLRB to consider an unfair labor practice charge arising from the employer’s conduct, it would focus on whether the employer had interfered with the employees’ § 7 rights, regardless of whether the employer used state funds in the process. Under AB 1889, the California court would be determining only whether an employer used state funds for any attempt whatsoever to influence employees, not whether that attempt violated the NLRA. Thus, because the statute is focused only on control over the use of state funding, there is CHAMBER OF COMMERCE v. LOCKYER 12221 no identicality of claims, and the primary jurisdiction test is not met.4
Because of the arguably protected character of the speech at issue, we would next assess whether the state statute is preempted because Congress would “prefer[ ] the costs inherent in a jurisdictional hiatus to the frustration of national labor policy which might accompany the exercise of state jurisdiction.” Sears, 436 U.S. at 203. For essentially the same reasons detailed above in the primary jurisdiction analysis, the risk that a state court applying AB 1889 could “misinterpret[ ] . . . federal law,” id., is nonexistent in this case. Not only is there no identicality of claims, but the subject matter of an AB 1889 suit is so far removed from the NLRA’s primary focus — the determination of what constitutes an unfair labor practice — that any rationale for Garmon preemption is absent. Sears itself provides a strong analogy. The Court, after noting the state interest in hearing trespass claims, identified a clear potential overlap between the NLRB’s jurisdiction and that of the state court: “[T]he state court was obligated to decide [whether] the trespass was not actually protected by federal law, a determination which might entail an accommodation of Sears’ property rights and the Union’s § 7 rights. In an unfair labor practice proceeding initiated by the Union, the Board might have been required to make the same accommodation.” Id. at 201. The Court further noted that the trespass at issue was arguably protected by the NLRA, whereas previ- 4 There is no merit to the Chamber of Commerce’s claim that the California statute provides an additional remedy for NLRA violations. The statute’s damages provisions are intended to remedy the misuse of state funds under the statute, regardless of whether any NLRA violation has occurred. 12222 CHAMBER OF COMMERCE v. LOCKYER ously recognized exceptions to Garmon preemption did not “involve[ ] protected conduct.” Id. at 204. Nevertheless, the Court concluded that the risk that regulation of trespass might impermissibly trench upon the NLRB’s jurisdiction over the speech rights of union members was too unlikely to justify usurpation of the state’s prerogative. There was no “significant risk of prohibition of protected conduct,” so the Court was “unwilling to presume that Congress intended the arguably protected character of the [regulated] conduct to deprive the California courts of jurisdiction to entertain Sears’ trespass action.” Id. at 207. Here, I have noted the important state interest in determining how its funds are spent. Even if the exercise of this state prerogative could have some effect on the arguably protected advocacy rights of employers, given the nature and functioning of the statute — which has no concern for whether the speech at issue was protected by the NLRA, but only for where the money to fund it came from — there is no “significant risk of prohibition of protected conduct.” Id. Indeed, the state interest is so strong that we cannot “presume that Congress intended the arguably protected character of the [regulated] conduct to deprive” California of the ability to control the use of its own funds in this manner. Id.