Opinion ID: 772362
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: effect of holly farms

Text: 32 Holly Farms Corp. v. NLRB, 517 U.S. 392 (1996), involved a technical and definitional issue about whether a poultry corporation was a farming operation under the NLRA. The Supreme Court affirmed the Fourth Circuit's deference to the Board under the circumstances of that case because it found the Board's answer [interpretation] reasonable. Id. at 403. The Court added that under the circumstances, the Board's construction did not have to be the best way to read the statute. Id. at 409. Four dissenters felt that the Board seriously misconstrued the statute and that its interpretation was unreasonable. Contrary to the intimation of the Board, we do not read Holly Farms as overruling the essential tenets of Cleveland Real Estate Partners. What is involved in the instant cases, and in Cleveland Real Estate Partners, is not the construction of an ambiguous term in the NLRA; rather it is the Board's interpretation of Supreme Court precedent on the specific question of union nonemployee solicitation in a shopping mall, contrary to the mall's established rules and without the mall's permission.