Opinion ID: 2806515
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The NLRB’s Evolving Approach

Text: The majority recognizes that our review of the Board’s assessment of its jurisdiction is de novo. Chevron deference plays no role. The majority also acknowledges that the NLRA is silent as to Indian tribes and that the Board’s exercise of jurisdiction in this case is premised fundamentally, not on any other act of Congress or governing judicial decision, but on principles effectively announced in its own prior decision in San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino, 341 NLRB 1055 (2004), aff’d on alternate grounds, 475 F.3d 1306 (D.C. Cir. 2007). Until just prior to its San Manuel decision, the NLRB had consistently held that Indian tribes and their enterprises were exempt from regulation under the NLRA. Id. at 1055. The NLRB’s earlier approach was based on respect for the traditional view that Indian tribes are generally free from federal intervention “unless Congress has specifically provided to the contrary.” Id. at 1059. Indeed, the NLRB’s earlier precedents were entirely consistent with the established jurisprudence. See Oklahoma Tax Comm’n v. Citizen Band Potawatomi Indian Tribe, 498 U.S. 505, 509 (1991) (“Indian tribes are ‘domestic dependent nations’ that exercise inherent sovereign authority over their members and territories.”); Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 60 (1978) (“[A] proper respect both for tribal sovereignty itself and for the plenary authority of Congress in this area cautions that we tread lightly in the absence of clear indications of legislative intent.”); United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313, 323 (1978) (recognizing that sovereignty retained by tribes is subject to complete defeasance by Congress, but that “until Congress acts, the tribes retain their existing sovereign powers”). Indeed, the Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the “enduring principle of Indian law” that tribal sovereignty is retained unless and until Congress clearly indicates intent to limit it. Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community, 134 S. Ct. 2024, 2030–32 (2014). No. 14-2239 NLRB v. Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Tribal Govʼt Page 27 So what changed to justify the NLRB’s new approach? Congress has not amended the NLRA or in any other way signaled its intent to subject Indian tribes to NLRB regulation. Nor has the Supreme Court recognized any such implicit intent. The NLRB “adopted a new approach” and “established a new standard” based on its recognition that some courts had begun to apply other generally applicable federal laws to Indian tribes notwithstanding Congress’s silence. San Manuel, 341 NLRB at 1055, 1057, 1059. These courts, the NLRB observed, found support for this new approach in a single statement in a 1960 Supreme Court opinion, Federal Power Comm’n v. Tuscarora Indian Nation, 362 U.S. 99, 116 (1960): “[I]t is now well-settled by many decisions of this Court that a general statute in terms applying to all persons includes Indians and their property interests.” The statement buttressed the Court’s holding, but was not essential to it. While the Tuscarora statement has blossomed into a “doctrine” in some courts in relation to some federal laws, closer inspection of the Tuscarora opinion reveals that the statement is in the nature of dictum and entitled to little precedential weight. In reality, the Tuscarora “doctrine,” here deemed to grant the NLRB “discretionary jurisdiction,” is used to fashion a house of cards built on a fanciful foundation with a cornerstone no more fixed and sure than a wild card. In Tuscarora, the Federal Power Act, “a complete and comprehensive plan” which by its terms addressed “tribal lands embraced within Indian reservations,” was held to sufficiently express congressional intent to authorize an exercise of eminent domain over land owned by individual Indians or even by a tribe if the land was not “within a reservation.” Id. at 118. The Tuscarora Court did not have to define the scope of Federal Power Commission jurisdiction in the face of congressional silence; it declared and enforced Congress’s manifest intent. Moreover, inasmuch as the Indian-owned land at issue in Tuscarora was not within the reservation, no interest of tribal sovereignty was implicated, but only tribal proprietary interests. And finally, the notion that the Tuscarora statement, independent of the Court’s actual holding, has any controlling or persuasive weight is negated by subsequent Supreme Court rulings applying traditional Indian law principles and upholding tribal sovereignty in the face of generally applicable federal laws—without even mentioning Tuscarora. See Iowa Mut. Ins. Co. v. LaPlante, 480 U.S. 9, 18 (1987) (tribal sovereignty upheld in the face of assertion of the No. 14-2239 NLRB v. Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Tribal Govʼt Page 28 generally applicable federal diversity statute because no indication of congressional intent to impair tribal sovereignty); Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe, 455 U.S. 130, 149 (1982) (congressional silence deemed insufficient to justify preemption of tribal sovereign power to tax). Indeed, in Bay Mills, the Court’s most recent treatment of tribal sovereignty, Tuscarora played absolutely no role as the Court adhered to the same traditional Indian law principles in holding Michigan’s attempt to restrain casino gaming barred by tribal sovereign immunity, a core aspect of tribal sovereignty. Bay Mills, 134 S. Ct. at 2030–39. The Tuscarora statement, properly understood, thus offers little authoritative guidance on the present jurisdictional question. Yet, the NLRB noted in San Manuel that the Tuscarora “seed” had germinated in Donovan v. Coeur d=Alene Tribal Farm, 751 F.2d 1113 (9th Cir. 1985), in relation to the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In Coeur d’Alene, the Ninth Circuit recognized that the Tuscarora statement was dictum, but nonetheless applied it to (1) reject the proposition that Indian tribes are subject only to those laws expressly made applicable to them; and (2) hold that tribes and their members are subject to generally applicable laws unless expressly excluded. Id. at 1115–16. In one fell swoop, the Coeur d=Alene court thus used the twenty-five year old Tuscarora statement to reverse the established presumption arising from congressional silence. According to the Coeur d’Alene innovation, congressional silence in a generally applicable law would now give rise to a reversed presumption: the law applies to Indian tribes unless one of three exceptions is shown to apply. Seventeen years later, the NLRB first invoked this Tuscarora-Coeur d=Alene approach to justify its assertion of jurisdiction to bar enforcement of a tribal right-to-work law in NLRB v. Pueblo of San Juan, 276 F.3d 1186 (10th Cir. 2002) (en banc). In Pueblo of San Juan, the NLRB advanced all the same arguments that are presented here. In a comprehensive opinion, the Tenth Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld traditional Indian law principles; required the NLRB to present evidence of Congress’s intent to divest tribal power through the NLRA; and, finding none, held the tribal law was not preempted by the NLRA. Id. at 1190–98. In response to the NLRB’s reliance on Tuscarora, the Tenth Circuit refused to read the Tuscarora statement in isolation. It refused to give the statement independent significance apart No. 14-2239 NLRB v. Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Tribal Govʼt Page 29 from the controversy actually decided in Tuscarora. The court recognized that the application of the Federal Power Act in Tuscarora only impacted the tribe’s proprietary interests as landowner; it did not impair tribal sovereign authority to govern, as was clearly implicated by the Pueblo of San Juan’s labor regulation. Citing the Supreme Court’s ruling in Merrion, 455 U.S. at 137, the Tenth Circuit recognized that enactment of Pueblo’s right-to-work ordinance was in furtherance of its strong interest in regulating economic activity involving its own members within its own territory, “a fundamental attribute of sovereignty” and “a necessary instrument of selfgovernment and territorial management.” Pueblo of San Juan, 276 F.3d at 1200. The Tenth Circuit reiterated and enforced the well-established traditional Indian law principles, holding that Tuscarora may not be applied by the NLRB to divest a tribe of its sovereign authority without clear indications of congressional intent to do so. Id. at 1199–1200. In 2002, the Tenth Circuit thus squarely rejected the NLRB’s innovative attempt to overrule its own prior precedents based on dictum appearing in a 1960 Supreme Court opinion. Undeterred, the NLRB tried again in San Manuel, 341 NLRB 1055. Employing the TuscaroraCoeur d’Alene standard, the NLRB again posited that, because the NLRA is silent and does not preclude exercise of jurisdiction, it follows that the NLRB has discretionary authority to balance interests of Indian sovereignty with interests of federal labor policy on a case-by-case basis. Id. at 1062–63. Again, the NLRB, in a tortured twist of logic, reasoned that because Congress, the branch of federal government with exclusive and plenary authority to divest Indian tribes of their retained sovereign powers, said nothing about Indian tribes in the NLRA, Congress must have meant to grant the NLRB discretionary authority to intrude upon Indian sovereignty as it sees fit. Extraordinary. In overruling its own prior precedents, the NLRB barely mentioned the Tenth Circuit’s contrary analysis in Pueblo of San Juan, the only court to have addressed (and definitively rejected) the NLRB’s new approach. The NLRB summarily dismissed Pueblo of San Juan in a footnote, characterizing it as “the opinion of a single court of appeals.” Id. at 1060 n.16.1 1 Secondarily, the NLRB suggested Pueblo of San Juan is factually distinguishable in that it implicated an exercise of tribal sovereign power; whereas in San Manuel, the NLRB asserted jurisdiction only to regulate commercial activities of the tribe in its proprietary capacity. 341 NLRB at 1060 n. 16. As pointed out by the dissent No. 14-2239 NLRB v. Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Tribal Govʼt Page 30 The NLRB’s San Manuel decision was affirmed on appeal; but its rationale was not. San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino v. NLRB, 475 F.3d 1306 (D.C. Cir. 2007). The D.C. Circuit recognized the tension between the Tuscarora statement, which it characterized as “possibly dictum,” and traditional Indian law principles prohibiting interference with tribal sovereignty except upon clear expression of congressional intent. Id. at 1311. The court expressly refrained from endorsing the NLRB’s Tuscarora-Coeur d=Alene approach. Yet, despite congressional silence, the D.C. Circuit allowed the NLRB’s exercise of jurisdiction to stand, reasoning that the tribal interests impacted were “primarily commercial” and the impact on tribal sovereignty would be “unpredictable, but probably modest.” Id. at 1315.2 The D.C. Circuit thus steered a middle course, departing from established principles of Indian law, but refraining from adopting the Tuscarora-Coeur d=Alene approach. In doing so, the D.C. Circuit did not try to reconcile its ruling with, or distinguish it from, the Tenth Circuit’s Pueblo of San Juan ruling. In fact, it conspicuously avoided any reference to the Tenth Circuit’s analysis. The NLRB thus obtained a favorable result, but the D.C. Circuit’s San Manuel decision falls far short of vindication for the NLRB. Far from establishing a new way of understanding the reach of the NLRA in relation to Indian tribes, the D.C. Circuit’s ruling is distinctly pragmatic and fact-specific.3 in San Manuel, this distinction does not withstand scrutiny. In both cases, the NLRB asserted jurisdiction under the NLRA to preempt analogous tribal labor relations ordinances. Id. at 1067. 2 The court reached this conclusion by focusing on the specific dispute at issue, competition between two unions to organize employees at a casino owned and operated by the tribe. The NLRB had ordered the tribe to grant equal access to both unions. Even though the court noted that employment relations at the casino were subject to a tribal labor ordinance, which represented an act of governance, the court held the ordinance was only “ancillary” and “secondary” to the commercial undertaking at issue. The D.C. Circuit thus focused on the tribe’s proprietary interest as owner of a commercial enterprise, rather than its status as sovereign of the territory where the casino was located. 3 The facts of this case are materially distinguishable from those presented in San Manuel. The nature of the NLRB=s instant intrusion—not simply resolving a particular dispute between unions at a casino, but asserting the NLRA=s preemptive effect to bar enforcement of numerous provisions of the Band=s comprehensive FEP Code indefinitely—threatens a much more substantial impairment of the Band=s sovereign authority. See also Pueblo of San Juan, 276 F.3d at 1200 (recognizing that NLRA preemption of a tribe=s legislative enactment regulating labor and employment relations within the reservation is a unique threat to “a fundamental attribute of sovereignty and a necessary instrument of self-government and territorial management”). Moreover, the D.C. Circuit’s notion that tribal interests of a commercial nature warrant only diminished tribal-sovereignty respect has been squarely rejected by the Supreme Court in Bay Mills, 134 S. Ct. at 2039 (reasoning that any such limitation of tribal sovereignty in relation to commercial activity is not for the courts to decide, but is a matter for Congress’s policy judgment). No. 14-2239 NLRB v. Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Tribal Govʼt Page 31