Court Opinion

ID: 9478469
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:49:51.679215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:26.464198
License: Public Domain

BOWNES, Circuit Judge,
(dissenting).
In this case, an employee was subjected to random drug testing by his employer as a condition for continued employment. The results from his urinalysis test were positive for the presence of traces of marijuana, and the employee, despite his denial of marijuana use and his request for an independent drug test, was summarily fired from his job. The issue before this court is whether the employee has a state law claim under the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act or other state statutes for invasion of privacy, or whether any such state law claim is preempted by § 301 pursuant to the collective-bargaining agreement in existence between the employer and employees at the time of the testing.
The decision in Lingle v. Norge Division of Magic Chef, — U.S. -, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988), is controlling. In that case, a state claim for retaliatory discharge was held not to be preempted by § 301, even though there was a collective bargaining agreement provision prohibiting discharge without just cause. The Court held that “an application of state law is pre-empted by § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 19 17 only if such application requires the interpretation of a collective bargaining-agreementId. 108 S.Ct. at 1885 (emphasis added). Since the retaliatory discharge claim did not turn on the meaning of any provision of the collective-bargaining agreement, the state law remedy was thus “independent” of the collective bargaining agreement. Id. 108 S.Ct. at 1882.
This analysis was also followed in Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 105 S.Ct. 1904, 85 L.Ed.2d 206 (1985), where the Court stated that “[i]n extending the pre-emptive effect of § 301 beyond suits for breach of contract, it would be inconsistent with congressional intent ... to pre-empt state rules that proscribe conduct, or establish rights and obligations, independent of a labor contract.” Id. at 212, 105 S.Ct. at 1912 (emphasis added). Section 301 preempts only those state law claims that are “inextricably intertwined with consideration of the terms of the labor contract.” Id. at 213, 105 S.Ct. at 1912.
In the instant case, there is nothing in the collective-bargaining agreement which even remotely deals with the subject of drug testing or privacy rights. The majority therefore uses the broad general management rights clause giving the employer “the right to post reasonable rules and regulations from time to time” as the wedge to implicate the collective-bargaining agreement. It then bootstraps itself to the finding that the state law claim is necessarily “inextricably intertwined” with the broad labor contract clause. To conclude, however, that such a general clause mandates interpretation of the collective-bargaining agreement when assessing the applicability of a state privacy law claim, is to prejudge the issue of what constitutes the elements of a state privacy law claim. There is no authority for an analysis in which the federal court hypothesizes how the state court would determine what the parameters of its own privacy laws are, and then, based on that guess, effectively precludes the state court from ever making its own determination on the matter by declaring that the issue so determined is preempted by federal law. This approach is to put the cart before the horse.
The majority has, in effect, proscribed the possibility that the state might man*123date privacy laws which are independent of a broad general management rights clause in a collective-bargaining agreement. Such a conclusion is unwarranted — there is nothing to prohibit a state from enacting a law which would create an independent right to be free from random drug testing. And indeed, the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act may encompass such a right, or it may not. But until the Massachusetts court speaks, we do not know, and there is no need to guess. It is simply unsupported to maintain, as the majority does, that the application of the Massachusetts state privacy law “requires the interpretation of [the] collective-bargaining agreement,” Lingle, 108 S.Ct. at 1885, and is therefore preempted. The majority’s approach would make a nullity of any independent privacy rights established by the states. This result, moreover, is in direct conflict with the pronouncements of the Supreme Court, which have not only recognized the existence of state (and federal) rights which are independent of the collective-bargaining agreement, but have steadfastly protected such rights from preemption. As Lingle states:
[TJhere is nothing novel about recognizing that substantive rights in the labor relations context can exist without interpreting collective-bargaining agreements .... “[Notwithstanding the strong policies encouraging arbitration, ‘different considerations apply where the employee’s claim is based on rights arising out of a statute designed to provide minimum substantive guarantees to individual workers.’ Barrentine, supra, 450 U.S. at 737 [101 S.Ct. at 1443].” Atchison, T. and S.F.R. Co. v. Buell, 480 U.S. 557, [565], 107 S.Ct. 1410, 1415, 94 L.Ed.2d 563 (1987) (emphasis added).
Lingle, 108 S.Ct. at 1884. See also, Fort Halifax Packing Co. v. Coyne, 482 U.S. 1, 107 S.Ct. 2211, 2223, 96 L.Ed.2d 1 (1987) (federal labor law does not preempt a state law providing a one-time severance payment to employees in the event of a plant closing “since [the state law’s] establishment of a minimum labor standard does not impermissibly intrude upon the collective-bargaining process”).
Thus, the issue is not, as the majority states, whether random drug testing by an employer is reasonable under the collective-bargaining agreement, but rather, whether it is prohibited by the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act or other state laws. Resolution of this question does not require interpretation of any provisions in the collective-bargaining agreement; what it does require is a decision as to the scope of the state law. Therefore, following Lingle, the state law claims in the instant case are not preempted by § 301. Indeed, if anything, the issue in the instant case (independence of invasion of privacy claims from “reasonable regulation” provision in the collective-bargaining agreement) is even more compelling for this conclusion than the issue in Lingle itself (independence of state retaliatory discharge claim from “just cause” discharge provision in the collective-bargaining agreement).
The Massachusetts court should be permitted to make its own determination as to the existence or non-existence of a privacy right to be free from random drug testing based on its interpretation of Massachusetts law. This determination can only be made independently of the broad general management rights clause in the collective-bargaining agreement. Whether the employer’s drug testing regulations are reasonable regulations, from either the employer’s or employee’s perspective, is not relevant to whether the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act independently establishes a privacy right to be free from mandatory random drug testing. It is for the Massachusetts courts to make this determination. The Massachusetts courts may or may not find that such a privacy right exists under Massachusetts law, but we should not predict, as the majority has done with such confidence, what the Massachusetts courts will decide.
It should be noted that in Lingle, Illinois had a clearly defined state tort of retaliatory discharge, and in the instant case, no such clearly defined state law covering privacy rights has yet been articulated by the state courts. This difference, however, provides even more reason for permitting *124the state courts to decide in the first instance the breadth of privacy rights under state law.
It must also be pointed out that while a central underpinning of the majority’s opinion is that random drug testing is not per se unconstitutional, this question is far from settled. The Supreme Court has not yet made any determination on this, the circuit courts are not in agreement, and the Massachusetts courts have not made any definitive pronouncement. Indeed, there are at least two cases currently before the Supreme Court challenging employee drug testing programs which are considerably more limited in scope, in terms of the circumstances under which such programs are required, than the instant case of mandatory random drug testing. See Burnley v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association, No. 87-1555 (argued 11/2/88) (appeal of Ninth Circuit ruling which held unconstitutional a Federal Railroad Administration drug testing program for railway employees who are involved in an accident because it does not require particularized suspicion or impairment prior to testing); National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, No. 86-1879 (argued 11/2/88) (appeal of Fifth Circuit ruling which upheld a Customs Service drug testing program that requires employees who seek certain job promotions to submit to urine sampling). There are also other cases surfacing which challenge the constitutionality of random drug testing. Moreover, the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act may well be interpreted by the Massachusetts courts to confer greater rights in this area than the federal Constitution does. By using the preemption doctrine, the majority is impliedly deciding for the Massachusetts courts that there is no independent privacy right to be free from random drug testing. This is an unwarranted conclusion at this juncture.
The majority has, in my judgment, erred in two respects: (i) in declaring on its own that the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act encompasses a privacy right which is limited by the reasonableness of the employer’s random drug testing program without first permitting the Massachusetts courts to interpret the parameters of its own laws, and effectively foreclosing such a state determination by declaring the issue preempted; and (ii) in declaring that once the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act is so construed, interpretation of the general management rights clause is required to determine the reasonableness of the random drug testing. The scope of the Massachusetts privacy right has not yet been articulated, and it is unwarranted to conclude that interpretation of the broad general management rights clause is required to determine the application of the state law. Lingle mandates that § 301 does not preempt the state law claim in the instant case.
The case should be remanded to the state court for a determination of the state law claims.
I respectfully dissent.