Court Opinion

ID: 9426637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:32.493322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:02.051245
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Powell,
with whom Mr. Justice Stewart and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join,
dissenting.
The petitioners’ attendance rule, imposed by the constitution of the International Steelworkers’ Union, provides that no member shall be eligible for election to a local union office unless he has attended one-half of the regular meetings of his local union during the preceding 36 months. The Court holds today, resolving a conflict among the Circuits, that this eligibility requirement is not reasonable within the meaning of § 401 (e) of Title IV of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, 29 U. S. C. § 481 (e). As this holding seems to me to be an unwarranted interference with the right of the union to manage its own internal affairs, I dissent.
Stated broadly, the purpose of Title IV of the Act is to insure “free and democratic” elections. But
“[t]he legislative history [of the Act] shows that Congress weighed how best, to legislate against revealed abuses in union elections without departing needlessly from its long-standing policy against unnecessary governmental intrusion into internal union affairs.” Wirtz v. Bottle Blowers Assn., 389 U. S. 463, 470-471 (1968) ; Wirtz v. Hotel Employees, 391 U. S. 492, 496 (1968).
*315Section 401 (e) reflects a congressional intent to accommodate both of these purposes. It provides that a labor organization may set “reasonable qualifications uniformly imposed” for members in good standing who wish to be candidates and to hold office. There is no contention that the attendance rule in question was not “uniformly imposed.” Nor does the rule render ineligible for office any member who displays enough interest to attend half of his local’s meetings.
The Court nevertheless, relying heavily on Hotel Employees, holds that this rule imposes an unreasonable qualification, violative of §401 (e). Hotel Employees involved a “prior office” rule that limited candidates for local union office to members who previously had held elective union office. The Court’s opinion in that case emphasized that the effect of the prior-office rule was to disqualify 93.1% of the union’s membership. In this case, the respondent argues that Hotel Employees enunciated a per se “effects” rule, requiring invalidation of union elections whenever an eligibility rule disqualifies all but a small percentage of the union’s membership. Although the Court today does not in terms adopt a per se “effects” analysis, it comes close to doing so. The fact that 96.5% of Local 3489’s members chose not to comply with its rule was given controlling weight.
In my view, the Court has extended the reach of Hotel Employees far beyond the holding and basic rationale of that case. Indeed, the rule there involved was acknowledged to be a sport — “virtually unique in trade union practice.” 391 U. S., at 505. It was a rule deliberately designed, as intimated by the Court’s opinion, to entrench union leadership. Id., at 499. Moreover, the general effect of the rule in Hotel Employees was predictable at the time the rule was adopted. By limiting eligibility to members who held or previously had held elective office, the disqualification of a large proportion of the membership was a purposeful and inevitable effect of the structure of the rule itself. The attendance *316rule before the Court today has no comparable feature. No member is precluded from establishing eligibility. Nor can the effect of the rule be predicted, as any member who demonstrates the requisite interest in union affairs is eligible to seek office. In short, the only common factor between the prior-office rule in Hotel Employees and that before the Court today is the similarity in the percentage of ineligible members. But in one case the effect was predetermined for the purpose of perpetuating control of a few insiders, whereas here the effect resulted from the free choice — perhaps the indifference — of the rank-and-file membership.
In Brennan v. Steelworkers, 489 F. 2d 884 (1973), the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit sustained the validity of the identical rule at issue here. In distinguishing Hotel Employees, it said:
“The self-evident restrictive character of the 'prior office holding’ rule, when accompanied by the numerical effect of drastically limiting the number of eligible candidates for office, justifies the result in Hotel Employees. It is, however, erroneous to conclude, as the Secretary contends, that Hotel Employees commands blind adherence to a per se theory even where, as here, the rule does not by itself disqualify anyone and . . . does serve legitimate union objectives.” 489 F. 2d, at 889.
The court went on to conclude that the purposes served by this attendance rule are legitimate.
Although the opinion of the Court today discounts the weight to be given these purposes, I agree with the Sixth Circuit that at least facially they serve legitimate and meritorious union purposes: (i) encouraging attendance at meetings; (ii) requiring candidates for office to demonstrate a meaningful interest in the union and its affairs; and (iii) assuring that members who seek office have had an opportunity to become informed as to union affairs. One may argue that *317requiring attendance at 18 of the 36 meetings prior to the election goes beyond what may be necessary to serve these purposes. But this is a “judgment call” best left to the unions themselves absent a stronger showing of potential for abuse than has been made in this case.,
The record in this case is instructive. Twenty-three members were eligible to run for office in the 1970 election. These were members who were nominated and who also had complied with the attendance requirement. The record does not show, and indeed no one knows, how many members were eligible under the rule but who were not nominated. Three candidates competed for the office of president, four for the three trustee offices, and six ran unopposed for the remaining offices. Of the 10 officers elected, six were incumbents. Nonincumbents were elected to the offices of vice president, treasurer, recording secretary, and the minor office of guide. There was no history of entrenched leadership and no evidence of restrictive union practices precluding free and democratic elections. Indeed, the record is to the contrary. Five different presidents had been elected during the preceding 10 years, and an estimated 40 changes in officers had occurred in the course of four separate elections. Bernard Frye, who initiated this case by complaint to the Secretary, won the presidency in an election subsequent to 1970 and thereafter lost it.
In the final analysis, respondent, who bears the burden of proving that the rule is “unreasonable,” rests his entire case on a facial attack upon the attendance rule itself, an attack supported by a statistical “effects test” that at best is ambiguous and one that could invalidate almost any attendance requirement that served legitimate union purposes. In my view, the respondent has failed to prove that the rule is unreasonable. For these reasons, I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.