Court Opinion

ID: 9427497
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:20:59.286983+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:07.515953
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Brennan,
concurring in the result.
I agree that the New York statute challenged in this case does not regulate or prohibit private conduct that is either arguably protected by § 7 or arguably prohibited by § 8 of the NLRA. Any claim that the New York law is pre-empted must therefore be based on the principles applied in Teamsters v. Morton, 377 U. S. 252 (1964), and Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm’n, 427 U. S. 132 (1976). Although I agree that the “statutory policy” articulated in those cases has some limits, I am not completely at ease with the distinctions employed by my Brother Stevens in this case to define those limits.* However, since I agree with my Brother *547Blackmun’s conclusion that the legislative histories of the NLRA and the Social Security Act reviewed in my Brother Stevens’ opinion provide sufficient evidence of congressional intent to decide this case without relying on those distinctions, I see no reason at this time either to embrace the distinctions or to deny that they may have relevance to pre-emption analysis in other cases.

My Brother SteveNs correctly observes that our past pre-emption cases have dealt with statutes that regulate private conduct, rather than confer public benefits, but does not make clear why these different objectives justify different levels of scrutiny. Furthermore, although the distinction between laws of general applicability and laws directed particularly at labor-management relations perhaps has more significance in the application of the principles of Machinists than in the application of pre-emption principles where Congress has arguably protected or prohibited conduct, see Cox, Labor Law Preemption Revisited, 85 Harv. L. Rev. 1337, 1355-1356 (1972), I am not at all sure that the New York statute is a law of general applicability. See id., at 1356; Powell, J., dissenting, post, at 557, and n. 10. I find more substance in my Brother SteveNs’ conclusion that the legislative history of the Social Security Act supports the argument that New York's law should be accorded a deference not unlike that accorded state *547laws touching interests deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility. Indeed, he may be correct in suggesting that this case is more a case of conflicting federal statutes than a pre-emption case, ante, at 539-540, n. 32.