Opinion ID: 547203
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Preemption of the Statutory Retaliatory Discharge Claim

Text: 14 Plaintiff argues that the district court erred in holding that his claim for retaliatory discharge under Mass.Gen.Laws ch. 152 Sec. 75B is preempted. He contends that this claim, being based on a cause of action established by state law, is wholly independent of rights and liabilities established by the collective bargaining agreement and that its resolution would not require interpretation of the agreement. Plaintiff relies primarily on Lingle v. Norge Division of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988), in which the Court held that Section 301 did not preempt a claim for retaliatory discharge under Illinois law, because under the applicable principles of Illinois law, such a claim is  'independent' of the collective-bargaining agreement [and] resolution of the state-law claim does not require construing the collective-bargaining agreement. Id. at 407, 108 S.Ct. at 1882. 15 Unlike the Illinois claim for retaliatory discharge, however, under Massachusetts law, such claims are, by the express terms of the statute, subject to the terms of any applicable collective bargaining agreement. Subsection (3) of Mass.Gen.Laws ch. 152 Sec. 75B states: 16 In the event that any right set forth in this section is inconsistent with an applicable collective bargaining agreement, such agreement shall prevail. An employee may not otherwise waive rights granted by this section. 3 17 This provision makes clear that to the extent that the collective bargaining agreement provides standards to govern the conduct underlying plaintiff's retaliatory discharge claim, the claim will be governed by the standards of the agreement, rather than by the standards of ch. 152 Sec. 75B. And to that extent, claims under section 75B will require interpretation of the agreement and, therefore, will be preempted by Section 301. See Lingle, 486 U.S. at 408 n. 7, 108 S.Ct. at 1882 n. 7 (if a law applied to all state workers but required, at least in certain instances, collective-bargaining agreement interpretation, the application of the law in those instances would be pre-empted); Jackson v. Liquid Carbonic Corp., 863 F.2d 111, 118 (1st Cir.1988) (If state-law rights and obligations do not necessarily 'exist independently of private agreements,' they 'can be waived or altered by agreement of private parties.' And to that extent, they can be, and are, preempted by the protective gloss which section 301 provides to those agreements.) (quoting Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 213, 105 S.Ct. 1904, 1912, 85 L.Ed.2d 206 (1985)), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 3158, 104 L.Ed.2d 1021 (1989); Hyles v. Mensing, 849 F.2d 1213, 1216 (9th Cir.1988) (Because the CBA, rather than a nonnegotiable state law standard, defines [the rights of the parties] with regard to the conduct complained of, [the] claims are not independent of the CBA.). See generally Miller v. AT & T Network Systems, 850 F.2d 543, 548 (9th Cir.1988) (if the CBA contains provisions that govern the actions giving rise to a state claim and the state has not shown an intent to prohibit the state law at issue from being altered or removed by private contract, then the state law claim is preempted). 18 The collective bargaining agreement at issue here contains several provisions that could be construed to govern the conduct underlying plaintiff's retaliatory discharge claim. Most significantly, the agreement's management rights clause vests in the employer, among other rights, the right to determine the direction of the work forces, including the disciplining, suspension or discharge of employees for proper cause. (emphasis added). As the Lingle Court itself suggested, a discharge that is improper under state law standards will not in every instance be improper under the collective bargaining agreement standards governing employee discharge for proper cause. 19 For even if an arbitrator should conclude that the contract does not prohibit a particular discriminatory or retaliatory discharge, that conclusion might or might not be consistent with a proper interpretation of state law. 20 486 U.S. at 413, 108 S.Ct. at 1885. 21 Thus, under Mass.Gen.Laws ch. 152 Sec. 75B(3), the rights and obligations of Sexton and plaintiff regarding plaintiff's discharge are controlled by the contractual provisions governing discharge and not by an independent state standard. It follows that the resolution of plaintiff's statutory retaliatory discharge claim depends on an interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement, so that the claim is completely preempted by Section 301. See Jackson v. Liquid Carbonic Corp., 863 F.2d 111, 118 (1st Cir.1988) ([Plaintiff's] claims do not rest upon inalterable state-law rights which float free of, and therefore do not require interpreting, the collective bargaining agreement.... On the contrary, those claims can only, we believe, be resolved by scrutinizing and evaluating the explicit powers granted to management under the Agreement.). 22