Opinion ID: 772362
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: effect of cleveland real estate partners

Text: 8 We are normally bound by the precedent established by a decision on a particular issue by a prior panel of our court. The Board majority, at best, inferentially acknowledged its burden to persuade us to deny the efficacy of Cleveland Real Estate Partners by stating: We are mindful that the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in which this case arises, has rejected the Board's interpretation of discrimination as used in Babcock & Wilcox. 3 In Cleveland Real Estate Partners, the Board adopted the administrative law judge's finding that the employer discriminatorily prohibited nonemployee union representatives from distributing handbills directed at shoppers to discourage them from patronizing a nonunion retailer in the mall because it permitted nonlabor related handbilling and solicitations by others in the mall. The Sixth Circuit denied enforcement of the Board's order, holding that, post-Lechmere, 4 discrimination as used in Babcock & Wilcox, means favoring one union over another, or allowing employer-related information while barring similar union-related information. We respectfully disagree with the Sixth Circuit's conclusion and adhere to our view that an employer that denies a union access while regularly allowing nonunion organizations to solicit and distribute on its property unlawfully discriminates against union solicitation. 9 Sandusky Mall Co. , 329 N.L.R.B. No. 62 (Sept. 30, 1999) (footnotes and citations omitted). 10 The discrimination to which the Board refers is the so-called discrimination exception to the general rule as explained by the Supreme Court in NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox, 351 U.S. 105, 112 (1956): [A]n employer may validly post his property against nonemployee distribution of union literature if reasonable efforts by the union through other available channels of communication will enable it to reach the employees with its message, and if the employer's notice or order does not discriminate against the union by allowing other distribution. 11 In Cleveland Real Estate Partners we rejected the Board's contention about the meaning of this exception, stating: The Board's understanding of Babcock's discrimination principle is well-exemplified by Be-Lo Stores, 318 N.L.R.B. No. 1 (1995), where the Board held that the occasional presence of Muslims selling oils and incense, an 'occasional' Jehovah's Witness distribut[ing] the Watchtower magazine, and on one occasion a local Lions Club solicit[ation], demonstrated discriminatory enforcement of a no-solicitation rule when the employer denied access to a union. Accord Dow Jones & Co., 318 N.L.R.B. No. 59 (1995). We think the Board has misinterpreted Babcock. Babcock and its progeny, which weigh heavily in favor of private property rights, indicate that the Court could not have meant to give the word discrimination the import the Board has chosen to give it. To discriminate in the enforcement of a no-solicitation policy cannot mean that an employer commits an unfair labor practice if it allows the Girl Scouts to sell cookies, but is shielded from the effect of the Act if it prohibits them from doing so. Cf. Guardian Indus. Corp. v. NLRB, 49 F.3d 317, 320-22 (7th Cir. 1965). Although the Court has never clarified the meaning of the term, and we have found no published court of appeals cases addressing the significance of discrimination in this context, we hold that the term discrimination as used in Babcock means favoring one union over another, or allowing employer-related information while barring similar union-related information. Although we are respectful of the Board's interpretation, we are not compelled to follow it when it rests on erroneous legal foundations. See Lechmere, 502 U.S. at 539, 112 S.Ct. at 849. 12 Cleveland Real Estate Partners, 95 F.3d at 464-65. 13 The Be-Lo Stores NLRB decision, above referred to and involving this same issue, was reversed by the Fourth Circuit at 126 F.3d 268 (4th Cir. 1997). The Board majority acknowledged in n. 7 of its opinion in this case that: [T]he Fourth Circuit found that the few solicitations that occurred at the employer's over 30 stores in the past year and a half were only isolated and sporadic and did not establish disparate enforcement of the employer's no-solicitation policy. In dicta, the court noted its doubt that, post-Lechmere, the Babcock & Wilcox discrimination treatment exception applies to nonemployees who do not propose to engage in organizational activities and that an employer's approval of limited charitable or civic distribution while excluding union distribution constitutes discrimination. 14 In addition to Cleveland Real Estate Partners and Be-Low Stores, the Board majority in this case acknowledges that in Guardian Indus. Corp. v. NLRB, 49 F.3d 317 (7th Cir. 1995): 15 [T]he Seventh Circuit held that an employer had not unlawfully discriminated against union solicitation where the employer allowed only swap and shop notices to be posted on its bulletin board and refused to allow the posting of notice of union meetings as inconsistent with its policy. The court found that the Board had failed to establish in what sense it might be discriminatory to distinguish between for-sale notes and meeting announcements. 16 The facts in Cleveland Real Estate Partners are very similar to those in the instant controversy. Union handbillers campaigned in a private mall against a mall shop owner for employing nonunion workers. The handbillers were instructed to leave because of the mall no-solicitation rule. The mall owner threatened police action if the non-employee union handbillers did not desist. The union filed unfair labor practice charges against the mall and the Board sustained the charges. We described the underlying NLRB decision in Cleveland Real Estate Partners: The NLRB held that the handbilling in this case was protected activity under section 7 of the Act and that by excluding the handbilling by union representatives, but permitting solicitation and handbilling if various kinds by others such as the Girl Scouts, the Knights of Columbus, political candidates, and school children selling candy, the mall owner, through its managing agent, unlawfully discriminated against the union within the meaning of the rule announced in N.L.R.B. v. Babcock, 351 U.S. 105, 76 S.Ct. 679, 100 L.Ed. 975. 17 95 F.3d at 462. We held in the appeal from the Board's decision that we review the Board's factual application and statutory construction under a substantial evidence standard, a deference that is warranted if the Board's conclusions are based upon a reasonably defensible construction of the Act. Id. (citing Emery Realty, Inc. v. NLRB, 863 F.2d 1259, 1263 (6th Cir. 1988)). 18 Cleveland Real Estate Partners reversed the Board after analyzing Babcock and Lechmere, Inc. v. NLRB, 502 U.S. 527 (1992), which also involved a controversy with respect to an organizational campaign by a union against a retail store in a shopping plaza owned by Lechmere. Non-employee union organizers began a handbilling campaign and Lechmere, in accordance with its policy, prohibited this non-employee union activity. The Board held Lechmere guilty of unfair labor practice violations under § 8(a)(1) and a divided panel of the First Circuit affirmed the Board decision. 5 19 Cleveland Real Estate Partners interpreted Lechmere in light of the Supreme Court's earlier decision in Babcock. After reviewing its holding in Babcock, the Supreme Court stated: Babcock's teaching is straightforward: § 7 simply does not protect nonemployee union organizers except in the rare case where the inaccessibility of employees makes ineffective the reasonable attempts by nonemployees to communicate with them through the usual channels[.] . . . Where reasonable alternative means of access exist, § 7's guarantees do not authorize trespasses by nonemployee organizers, even . . . under . . . reasonable regulations established by the Board. Lechmere, 502 U.S. at 537, 112 S.Ct. at 847-48 (quoting Babcock, 351 U.S. at 112, 76 S.Ct. at 684). 20 95 F.3d at 463. The Supreme Court in Lechmere reversed the First Circuit and declined to follow the Board precedent inJean Country, stating the general rule in this type of shopping center handbilling: While Babcock indicates that an employer may not always bar nonemployee union organizers from his property, his right to do so remains the general Rule. To gain access, the union has the burden of showing that no other reasonable means of communicating its organizational message to the employees exists or that the employer's access rules discriminate against union solicitation. That the burden imposed on the union is a heavy one is evidenced by the fact that the balance struck by the Board and the courts under the Babcock accommodation principle has rarely been in favor of trespassory organizational activity. 21 Lechmere, 502 U.S. at 535 (quoting Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. San Diego County Dist. Council of Carpenters, 436 U. S. 180, 205 (1978)) (emphasis in original; footnotes omitted). 22 Lechmere concluded that we judge an agency's later interpretation of the statute against our prior determination of the statute's meaning. 502 U.S. at 537. The Lechmere court also noted a distinction 'of substance' between the union activities of employees and nonemployees. Id. (citing Babcock & Wilcox, 351 U.S. at 113). In the latter situation, the Board was not permitted to engage in the same balancing between an owner's right to exclude from a shopping center and an employee's right to engage in union activity. Id. In sum, Lechmere re-emphasized Babcock's rule that 'an employer may validly post his property against nonemployee distribution of union literature.' 6 Id. at 538 (quoting Babcock & Wilcox, 351 U.S. at 112). 23 Cleveland Real Estate Partners, relying on Lechmere, cited the principles above set out. It also relied upon United Food & Commercial Workers AFL-CIO, Local No. 880 v. NLRB, 74 F.3d 292, 297-99 (D.C. Cir. 1996). It was not discrimination with the meaning of Babcock & Wilcox for Cleveland Real Estate Partners to enforce its general no-solicitation rule against the union nonemployees and at the same time occasionally to allow limited charitable activities in the mall deemed beneficial to the owner and the tenants. An owner of private commercial property who permits a charitable organization to distribute information or conduct solicitations on its property simply does not implicate the policies of the NLRA and does not, without more, render an employee guilty of an unfair labor practice when later it chooses to follow the general rule of validly post[ing its] property against nonemployee distribution of union literature. Babcock, 351 U.S. at 112, 76 S.Ct. at 684. 24 95 F.3d at 465.