Court Opinion

ID: 9428757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:41.918459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:15.048249
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Brennan joins, concurring.
I am not prepared to hold that a newly elected president of a local union may discipline, without violating the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 73 Stat. 519, 29 U. S. C. § 401 et seq., and as a matter of retaliation, all union member-employees who opposed his candidacy. As the Court notes, a union member possesses, under the Act, rights to freedom of expression and of speech and assembly, ante, at 436-437, and a right to support the candidate of his choice.
I must assume that what the Court holds today is that the newly elected president may discharge the union’s appointed business agents and other appointed union member-employees who will be instrumental in evolving the president’s ad*443ministrative policies. See Elrod v. Burns, 427 U. S. 347 (1976); Branti v. Finkel, 445 U. S. 507 (1980). Indeed, the Court uses the terms “staff,” ante, at 441, and “his own administrators,” ibid. In addition, this particular union’s bylaws expressly give the president plenary authority over the business agents. With that much, I have no difficulty.
On the understanding, but only on the understanding, that the Court by its opinion is not reaching out further to decide the same issue with respect to nonpolicymaking employees, that is, rank-and-file member-employees (a matter which, for me, presents another case for another day), I join the Court’s opinion.