Court Opinion

ID: 9483977
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:37:10.34547+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:57.009178
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
According to my colleagues, the question presented to us is whether Karen Livadas was entitled to a correct interpretation of state law. See Majority at 558-59. The answer to this question is clearly no. The answer is much different, however, if one asks the right question: May Karen Liva-das be denied state-law benefits just be*561cause she is covered by a collective bargaining agreement? It is our responsibility to answer the question fairly presented to us by the litigants, not one we might prefer they had asked. Because the majority comes up with the right answer to the wrong question, I must dissent.
I
A. What happened here is fairly simple: Karen Livadas lost her job at Safeway and the employer did not send her her final paycheck until three days later. This is not a big deal, but under California law an employee is entitled to her paycheck on the date of departure; the law provides a penalty for any delay. Cal. Labor Code §§ 201 & 203. To ensure that impecunious employees are not denied their statutory rights, the state Labor Commission — the defendant here — is charged with enforcing such claims on behalf of employees who have valid claims and who are financially unable to employ an attorney, Id. § 98.3(a).
The Commissioner does have a good bit of discretion whether to press a particular employee’s claim. For example, it is the Commissioner who must determine under what circumstances an employee is deemed financially unable to employ counsel. The Commissioner must also resolve an important question of state law: Does the employee have a valid claim? Had the Commissioner refused to enforce Livadas’s claim for either of these reasons, this would have been purely a matter of state law and not the proper subject of a federal action.
But the Commissioner did not refuse to press Livadas’s claim on either of these grounds. Instead, he refused to litigate on her behalf because she is covered by a collective bargaining agreement. In so doing, the Commissioner treated employees who are covered by a CBA in a different— and less favorable — manner than all other employees. This is clearly discrimination based on an exercise of protected federal rights. Whether such discrimination is permissible is a question of federal, not state, law.
The majority is distracted by the fact that the Commissioner’s policy is based on his interpretation of section 229 of the California Labor Code, which precludes the Commissioner from getting involved in disputes calling for an interpretation of a CBA. The Commissioner construes this section as prohibiting enforcement of Liva-das’s claim. But surely it doesn’t matter why the Commissioner engages in invidious discrimination. Were the Commissioner to interpret state law as authorizing the enforcement of section 201 claims only on behalf of whites, would his decision be insulated from federal scrutiny? The point is, the Commissioner is applying state law and his own policy in a way that impinges on protected federal rights. We can’t duck the question whether federal law renders such discrimination impermissible.
B. Recognizing perhaps that state law cannot carry the day, the majority seeks refuge in a novel doctrine of quasi-preemption. Assuming, the majority says, that the Commissioner’s enforcement of section 201 would not be preempted by federal law,1 the Commissioner is nevertheless justified in staying his hand by virtue of certain penumbras and emanations radiating from the body of federal labor law: “Given the primacy of the federal scheme for handling labor disputes, we believe that Congress would not want state officials erring on the side of adjudicating state law disputes whenever it is a close call as to whether a claim is preempted. If anything, Congress would presumably want state officials to defer to arbitration and adjudication under the federal scheme if a claim even arguably is intertwined with consideration of a collective bargaining agreement containing an arbitration clause.” Majority at 559-60.
This rationale is remarkable for more reasons than one. To begin with, our func*562tion is to apply the laws Congress has written, not to guess what Congress “presumably” would have wanted as to matters about which it did not legislate. Further, the theory of quasi-preemption the majority adopts is strikingly similar to the theory of preemption considered and rejected by the Supreme Court and by our court. See Franchise Tax Bd. v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust, 463 U.S. 1, 25 n. 28, 103 S.Ct. 2841, 2854 n. 28, 77 L.Ed.2d 420 (1983) (“we have never intimated that any action merely relating to a contract within the coverage of [LMRA] § 301 arises exclusively under that section”); Miller v. AT & T Network Systems, 850 F.2d 543, 546-47 (9th Cir.1988). To the extent my colleagues are divining some preemptive corona surrounding the federal labor laws, it surely cannot include that which the Supreme Court has said is not preempted.
The question of preemption is, of course, significant. To the extent the Commissioner’s enforcement of section 201 of the California Labor Code conflicts with federal labor law, the Commissioner is without authority to act. But once we step outside the arena of actual preemption, federal law imposes no obligation on the Commissioner to refrain from acting. And his refusal to act simply because the employee is covered by a CBA raises a serious question of anti-union discrimination. The majority’s attempt to find safety between the pendulum of preemption and the pit of unlawful discrimination is simply unavailing.
II
The issue presented to us is really very simple: Is the relief Livadas seeks in fact preempted by the federal labor laws? And if not, is the Commissioner acting unlawfully in refusing to enforce Livadas’s claim because she is covered by a CBA?
A. The first question has an easy answer: No. State-law claims are preempted by federal labor law if they are “inextricably intertwined with consideration of the terms of the labor contract.” Allis-Chal-mers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 213, 105 S.Ct. 1904, 1912, 85 L.Ed.2d 206 (1985). We have interpreted this language to require federal preemption of state-law causes of action for violating a CBA, founded on rights created by a CBA, or substantially dependent on or governed by the terms of a CBA. See Paige v. Henry J. Kaiser Co., 826 F.2d 857, 861 (9th Cir.1987), cert denied, 486 U.S. 1054, 108 S.Ct. 2819, 100 L.Ed.2d 921 (1988). On the other hand, there is no incompatibility “between federal rules designed to restore the equality of bargaining power, and state ... legislation that imposes minimal substantive requirements on contract terms negotiated between parties to labor agreements.” Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U.S. 724, 754, 105 S.Ct. 2380, 2397, 85 L.Ed.2d 728 (1985). In Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399, 108 S.Ct. 1877, 100 L.Ed.2d 410 (1988), the Supreme Court held that state-law claims are “independent” of the CBA and therefore not preempted where “resolution of the state-law claim does not require construing the collective bargaining agreement.” Id. at 407, 108 S.Ct. at 1882.
In Galvez v. Kuhn, 933 F.2d 773 (9th Cir.1991), we interpreted Lingle and held that an employee’s claim for assault and battery based on unsafe working conditions was not preempted, even though there were provisions in the CBA that governed the work environment. Because the employee’s claim “alleg[ed] violation of a duty owned to all citizens,” the state-law claim could be decided without reference to the CBA. Id. at 777 (emphasis added); see also Operating Engineers Pension Trust v. Wilson, 915 F.2d 535 (9th Cir.1990) (state-law action for fraud in the inducement not preempted because independent of rights under CBA).
Livadas’s claim against Safeway is grounded only in state law: A court could find that the employer did not pay her immediately upon termination — and thus violated the statute — without ever looking at the CBA. The Commissioner’s argument *563that enforcement of section 201 requires an application of the CBA because he will have to consult the contract to determine Livadas’s wage rate is answered by the Supreme Court in Lingle: “A collective-bargaining agreement may, of course, contain information such as rate of pay and other economic benefits that might be helpful in determining the damages to which a worker prevailing in a state-law suit is entitled. ... In such a case, federal law would govern the interpretation of the agreement, but the separate state-law analysis would not be thereby pre-empted.” 486 U.S. at 413 n. 12, 108 S.Ct. at 1885 n. 12 (emphasis added).
B. The second question is somewhat closer. The Commissioner seems to be badly mistaken about the scope of federal labor law preemption — honestly mistaken, but mistaken nonetheless. That the Commissioner’s policy is based on an honest (though flagrant) mistake of law does not save it from invalidity. He is a state official administering a state program in a way that arguably burdens the right of employees to participate in collective bargaining. Where, as here, the policy treats individuals differently based on the exercise of a federally protected right, we must look at the effects of the policy, not merely its purposes.
The effect of the Commissioner's policy is not earthshaking, but neither is it insignificant. It denies employees who are covered by a CBA the right to have their state labor law claims pressed by the state Labor Commissioner free of charge. What this means is that impecunious employees who serve at will, pursuant to individual contracts and those who are covered by implied contracts are all entitled to the services of a state official; the only employees excluded as a class are those who exercise their federal labor rights. As the district court noted, “[t]he parties agree that the defendant provides certain valuable protections and benefits to all California employees except those who work under collective bargaining agreements.” Livadas v. Aubry, 749 F.Supp. 1526, 1528 (N.D.Cal.1990). I find it hard to conclude that denying a valuable benefit to employees simply because they are covered by a CBA does not burden the exercise of rights protected by the NLRA.2
I might nevertheless conclude that this burden on the collective bargaining process is permissible if it served some legitimate state purpose, but we know it doesn’t. I have difficulty approving even a slight burden on a federally protected right when the only justification is the Commissioner’s mistaken understanding of federal preemption law. Federal preemption is our bailiwick, not the Commissioner’s, and if he is confused on this score, it’s our job to set him straight. Because he offers not the slightest state-law based justification for his policy, I cannot see my way clear to approving it.
Conclusion
While I agree with the majority that Livadas has a right enforceable in federal court, I cannot join my colleagues in gutting that right and improperly deferring to the Commissioner. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. This is more than a reasonable assumption; it’s a fact. See below at II.A.

. Aside from the effects on individual employees, the Commissioner’s policy may have an effect on the collective bargaining process itself. It is not inconceivable that an employer could point to this discrepancy as an argument against an effort to unionize: "Look here, if you vote for the union, the first thing that happens is that the state Labor Commissioner abandons you.” In a closely fought election, this type of argument might make a difference.