Court Opinion

ID: 9427189
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:59.591743+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:05.350320
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion, but add three observations:
1. The problem of a no-man’s land in regard to trespassory picketing has been a troubling one in the past because employers have been unable to secure a Labor Board adjudication whether the picketing was “actually protected” under § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act except by resorting to self-help to expel the pickets and thereby inducing the union to file an unfair labor practice charge. The unacceptable possibility of precipitating violence in such a situation called into serious question the practicability there of the Garmon preemption test, see Longshoremen v. Ariadne Shipping Co., 397 U. S. 195, 202 (1970) (White, J., concurring), despite the virtues of the Garmon test in ensuring uniform application of the standards of the NLRA.
In this case, however, the NLRB as amiaus curiae has taken a position that narrows the no-man’s land in regard to tres-passory picketing, namely, that an employer’s mere act of informing nonemployee pickets that they are not permitted *209on his property “would constitute a sufficient interference with rights arguably protected by Section 7 to warrant the General Counsel, had a charge been filed by the Union, in issuing a Section 8 (a)(1) complaint” against the employer. Brief for NLRB as Amicus Curiae 18. Hence, if the union, once asked to leave the property, files a § 8 (a)(1) charge, there is a practicable means of getting the issue of trespassory picketing before the Board in a timely fashion without danger of violence.
In this case, as the Court notes, the Union failed to file an unfair labor practice charge after being asked to leave. In such a situation pre-emption cannot sensibly obtain because the “risk of an erroneous state-court adjudication ... is outweighed by the anomalous consequence of a rule which would deny the employer access to any forum in which to litigate either the trespass issue or the protection issue.” Ante, at 206-207. It should be made clear, however, that the logical corollary of the Court’s reasoning is that if the union does file a charge upon being asked by the employer to leave the employer’s property and continues to process the charge expeditiously, state-court jurisdiction is pre-empted until such time as the General Counsel declines to issue a complaint or the Board, applying the standards of NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105 (1956), rules against the union and holds the picketing to be unprotected. Similarly, if a union timely files a§8(a)(1) charge, a state court would be bound to stay any pending injunctive or damages suit brought by the employer until the Board has concluded, or the General Counsel by refusal to issue a complaint has indicated, that the picketing is not protected by § 7. As the Court also notes, ante, at 202, the primary-jurisdiction rationale articulated in Garmon “unquestionably requires that when the same controversy may be presented to the state court or the NLRB, it must be presented to the Board.” Once the no-man’s land has been bridged, as it is once a union files a charge, the importance of *210deferring to the Labor Board’s case-by-case accommodation of employers’ property rights and employees’ § 7 rights mandates pre-emption of state-court jurisdiction.*
2. The opinion correctly observes, ante, at 205, that in implementing this Court’s decision in Babcock the NLRB only occasionally has found trespassory picketing to be protected under § 7. That observation is important, as is noted, *211ante, at 203, in that even the existence of a no-man's land may not justify departure from Garmon’s pre-emption standard if the exercise of state-court jurisdiction portends frequent interference with actually protected conduct. But in its conclusion that trespassory picketing has been found in “experience under the Act” to be only “rare[ly]” protected and “far more likely to be unprotected than protected,” ante, at 205, I take the opinion merely to be observing what the Board's past experience has been, not as glossing how the Board must treat the Babcock test in the future, either in regard to organizational picketing or other sorts of protected picketing. The Babcock test provides that “when the inaccessibility of employees makes ineffective the reasonable attempts by nonemployees to communicate with them through the usual channels, the right to exclude from property [is] required to yield to the extent needed to permit communication of information on the right to organize.” 351 U. S., at 112. A variant of that test has been applied by the Board when communication with consumers is at stake. See Scott Hudgens, 230 N. L. R. B. 414 (1977). The problem of applying the test in the first instance is delegated to the Board, as part of its “responsibility to adapt the Act to changing patterns of industrial life.” NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U. S. 251, 266 (1975); Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507, 523 (1976). When, for a number of years, the First Amendment holding of Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U. S. 308 (1968), overruled in Hudgens v. NLRB, diverted the Board from any need to consider trespassory picketing under the statutory test of Babcock, it would be unwise to hold the Board confined to its earliest experience in administering the test.
3. The acceptability of permitting state-court jurisdiction over “arguably protected” activities where there is a jurisdictional no-man’s land depends, as the Court notes, on whether the exercise of state-court jurisdiction is likely to interfere frequently with actually protected conduct. The *212likelihood of such interference will depend in large part on whether the state courts take care to provide an adversary-hearing before issuing any restraint against union picketing activities. In this case, Sears filed a verified complaint seeking an injunction against the picketing on October 29, 1973. The Superior Court of California entered a temporary restraining order that day. So far as the record reveals, the Union was not accorded a hearing until November 16, on the order to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not be entered. The issue of a prompt hearing was apparently not raised before the Superior Court and was not raised on appeal, and hence does not enter into our judgment here approving the exercise of state-court jurisdiction. But it may be remiss not to observe that in labor-management relations, where ex parte proceedings historically were abused, see F. Frankfurter & N. Greene, The Labor Injunction 60, 64-66 (1930), it is critical that the state courts provide a prompt adversary hearing, preferably before any restraint issues and in all events within a few days thereafter, on the merits of the § 7 protection question. Labor disputes are frequently short lived, and a temporary restraining order issued upon ex parte application may, if in error, render the eventual finding of § 7 protection a hollow vindication.

Mr. Justice Powell’s concern, post, at 213, that there is an unacceptable delay in waiting for the General Counsel to act is answered in main part by this Court’s previous holdings that any obstructive picketing or threatening conduct may be directly regulated by the State. See Electrical Workers v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd., 315 U. S. 740 (1942); Youngdahl v. Rainfair, Inc., 355 U. S. 131 (1957); cf. Automobile Workers v. Russell, 356 U. S. 634 (1958). There was no hint of such a problem in this case. As the California Supreme Court notes: “It is not disputed that at all times . . . the pickets conducted themselves in a peaceful and orderly fashion. The record discloses no acts of violence, threats of violence, or obstruction of traffic.” 17 Cal. 3d 893, 896, 553 P. 2d 603, 606 (1976). There is no claim made that the pickets annoyed members of t(ie public who wished to patronize the store of petitioner Sears; such conduct would be enjoinable, Youngdahl, supra, if it had occurred. And, of course, under current NLRB law, pickets would have no right to carry on their activity within a store. Marshall Field & Co. v. NLRB, 200 F. 2d 375 (CA7 1953). With respect, I do not see what “danger of violence” remains in such a situation, any more than for a business that fronts upon a public sidewalk.
The possibility of delay to which my Brother Powell adverts is a double-edged sword. The question really is upon whom the burden of delay should be placed. If it takes the General Counsel “weeks” to decide whether to issue a § 8 (a) (1) complaint, by the same token there would be no relief available against an erroneous state-court injunction interfering with protected picketing for an equal length of time. Section 10 (j) permits the Board to seek injunctive relief only after the issuance of a complaint. The Board arguably might seek dissolution of a state-court order under NLRB v. Nash-Finch Co., 404 U. S. 138 (1971), but that remedy, too, would encompass some delay. It is worth noting that here by November 12, 1973, the picketing, confined to the public sidewalks by the California Superior Court’s temporary restraining order, was abandoned as ineffective. Delay in remedy is desired by neither party in a labor dispute.