Court Opinion

ID: 9726343
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:45:18.719581+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:26.221086
License: Public Domain

Eobert W. Hansen, J.
(concurring). In a case involving the same fine, the same union and the same union member as here involved,1 the United States Supreme Court makes a specific reference to the exact case now before us. For the court, Mr. Justice White stated:
“. . . Petitioners refused to pay the fines, and the union brought suit in state court to collect the fines as a matter of local contract law. . . . (footnote 3)
“3 Unless the rule or its enforcement impinges on some policy of the federal labor law, the regulation of the relationship between union and employee is a contractual matter governed by local law. As the trial examiner put it in this case, the Board ‘never intended . . . to suggest that the disciplinary action [s] in en*140forcement of [union] rules . . . were affirmatively protected under the Act, as opposed to merely being not violations thereof.’ It is thus a ‘federally unentered enclave’ open to state law. 145 ÑLRB at 1133” 2
Our court’s majority opinion gives no weight at all to this footnoted reference in the action now before us. Our majority opinion terms the reference and comment only an “. . . ‘aside,’ by way of a footnote, wholly dicta in this case, . . .” We doubt that state appellate courts ought to follow law review contributors in pruning or cutting out from United States Supreme Court opinions statements they consider unnecessary or irrelevant. We have no doubt that such scissors ought not be wielded by the exact state court which a particular reference in a particular case obviously was intended to aid and assist.
Certainly it is transparently inaccurate to summarize the footnote as no more than “. . . approval for the trial examiner’s statement. . . .” There are three sentences in the footnote, not just one. The middle sentence does quote with apparent approval the trial examiner’s holding that the National Labor Relations Act did not prohibit the enforcement of the fine but also did not affirmatively protect it against state court attack. There are two outside slices to the sandwich. The first sentence clearly states that unless a federal labor law is impinged upon, the “. . . regulation of the relationship between union and employee is a contractual matter governed by local law. . . .” The third sentence says in summary: “It is thus a ‘federally unentered enclave’ open to state law.” These express statements that pre-emption does not apply gain added strength and applicability when it is remembered that they are made, not in reference to some class or category of cases, but in direct reference to the very case now before us.
*141The issue in Scofield on which the United States Supreme Court divided was whether the enforcement of the union fine by court proceedings was prohibited by the National Labor Relations Act. The hitchhiker question was whether the National Labor Relations Act protected this area of union-member relationship from state court review and action. This question of whether there is pre-emption of the state’s right to act did not have to be reached. No assertion of a state’s right so to do was before the high court. Nonetheless, the court decision elected to set forth the existence of this pending state court action, and to term it related to an area “governed by local law.” Greater significance, not less, is to be given to the high court’s going out of its way to refer to the case before us, and to place it in a “federally unentered enclave.”
The majority opinion cites the Garmon rule3 as requiring state jurisdiction to yield when “it is clear or may fairly be assumed that the activities which a State purports to regulate are protected by sec. 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, . . .” That is right, but the rule does not apply to a situation where the United States Supreme Court has stated, even by footnote, that an area is “governed by local law” and has become a “federally unentered enclave.” It was well and good in Natzke4 to defer to NLRB rulings as to enforcement of union fines “until such time as the United States Supreme Court has spoken . ...” 5 Deference now should be to what the United States Supreme Court has said, no longer to what the NLRB earlier ruled. The shift in deference should be made easier by the fact that the Natáke confidence that the United States Supreme Court *142had not spoken while the NLRB had was itself based on a footnote, in a United States Supreme Court opinion.6 Mr. Justice Brennan’S footnote (in Allis-Chalmers) was not termed an “aside” or “dicta” and ignored. It was quoted and relied upon. Mr. Justice White’s footnote (in Scofield) is entitled to the same treatment.
So the writer would hold that this court is entitled, in fact very nearly directed, to determine here the legitimacy of the union interest furthered by the rule or resolution, the reasonableness both of the penalty imposed and the procedure followed, and the extent to which any expressed state law or public policy may be violated by the union-imposed production ceiling. However, here, since the United States Supreme Court included in its opinion in Scofield a full evaluation and review of the rule, fine, and procedure here followed, there is not much left undone or unsaid. For example, the United States Supreme Court stated:
“In the case at hand, there is no showing in the record that the fines were unreasonable or the mere fiat of a union leader, or that the membership of petitioners in the union was involuntary. Moreover, the enforcement of the rule was not carried out through means unacceptable in themselves, ...” 7
“The union rule here left the collective bargaining process unimpaired, breached no collective contract, required no pay for unperformed services, induced no discrimination by the employer against any class of employees, and represents no dereliction by the union of its duty of fair representation. ...” 8
*143Perhaps, it could be argued that so full and complete a validation of the union rule and its enforcement was not required to reach and determine the issue of the National Labor Relations Act’s applicability. But the writer finds the approval persuasive, if not entirely controlling, on the issue of whether the rule, fine and enforcement can be found to offend any legitimate interest or policy of the state. While concluding that federal pre-emption no longer applies to enforcement of union fines against members, the writer would find no state law or policy contravened here by the procedures followed.
Agreeing with the court majority as to other issues raised, the writer joins in finding affirmance required.

 Scofield v. NLRB (1969), 394 U. S. 423, 89 Sup. Ct. 1154, 22 L. Ed. 2d 385.

 Id. at page 426.

 San Diego Unions v. Garmon (1959), 359 U. S. 236, 244, 79 Sup. Ct. 773, 3 L. Ed. 2d 775.

 Local 248 UAW v. Natzke (1967), 36 Wis. 2d 237, 153 N. W. 2d 602.

 Id. at page 246.

 In a footnote to Mr. Justice Brennan’s opinion in NLRB v. Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co. (1967), 388 U. S. 175, 197, 87 Sup. Ct. 2001, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1123, it is stated (fn. 37) : “Not before us is the question of the extent to which union action for enforcement of disciplinary penalties is pre-empted by federal labor law. . . .”

 Scofield v. NLRB, supra, at page 430.

 Id. at page 436.