Court Opinion

ID: 9427191
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:59.599388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:05.360977
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Stewart and Mr. Justice Marshall join,
dissenting.
The Court concedes that both the objective and the location of the Union’s peaceful, nonobstructive picketing of *215Sears’ store may have been protected under the National Labor Relations Act.1 Therefore, despite the Court’s transparent effort to disguise it, faithful application of the principles of labor law pre-emption established in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236 (1959),2 would compel the conclusion that the California Superior Court was powerless to enjoin the Union from picketing on Sears’ property : that the trespass was arguably protected is determinative of the state court’s lack of jurisdiction, whether or not preemption limits an employer’s remedies. See Longshoremen v. Ariadne Shipping Co., 397 U. S. 195, 200-201 (1970); Garmon, supra; Meat Cutters v. Fairlawn Meats, Inc., 353 U. S. 20 (1957); Guss v. Utah Labor Relations Bd., 353 U. S. 1 (1957).3
By holding that the arguably protected character of union activity will no longer be sufficient to pre-empt state-court jurisdiction, the Court creates an exception of indeterminate dimensions to a principle of labor law pre-emption that has been followed for at least two decades. Now, when the em*216ployer lacks a “reasonable opportunity” to have the Board consider whether the challenged aspect of the employee conduct is protected and when employees having that opportunity have not invoked the Board’s jurisdiction, a state court will have jurisdiction to enjoin arguably protected activity if the “risk of an erroneous . . . adjudication [by it does not outweigh] the anomalous consequence [of denying a remedy to the employer].” Ante, at 206. In making this rather amorphous determination, the lower courts apparently are to consider the strength of the argument that § 7 in fact protects the arguably protected activity, their own assessments of their ability correctly to determine the underlying labor law issue, and the strength of the state interest in affording the employer an opportunity to have a state court restrain the arguably protected conduct.
This drastic abridgment of established principles is unjustified and unjustifiable. The Garmon test, itself fashioned after some 15 years of judicial experience with jurisdictional conflicts that threatened national labor policy, see Motor Coach Employees v. Lockridge, 403 U. S. 274, 290-291 (1971), has provided stability and predictability to a particularly complex area of the law for nearly 20 years. Thus, the most elementary notions of stare decisis dictate that the test be reconsidered only upon a compelling showing, based on actual experience, that the test disserves important interests. Emphatically, that showing has not been and cannot be made. Rather, the Garmon test has proved to embody an entirely acceptable, and probably the best possible, accommodation of the competing state-federal interests. That an employer’s remedies in consequence may be limited, while anomalous to the Court, produces no positive social harm; on the contrary, the limitation on employer remedies is fully justified both by the ease of application of the test by thousands of state and federal judges and by its effect of averting the danger that state courts may interfere with national labor policy. In *217sharp contrast, today’s decision creates the certain prospect of state-court interference that may seriously erode § 7’s protections of labor activities. Indeed, the most serious objection to the decision today is not that it is contrary to the teachings of stare decisis but rather that the Court’s attempt to create a narrow exception to the principles of Garmon promises to be applied by the lower courts so as to disserve the interests protected by the national labor laws.
I
It is appropriate to recall the considerations that have shaped the development of the doctrine of labor law preemption. The National Labor Relations Act (Act), of course, changed the substantive law of labor relations. Prior to its enactment many courts treated concerted labor activities of employees as tortious conspiracies or restraints of trade to be enjoined unless the activities related to a specific benefit sought by the employees from their employer; activity directed at strengthening the union was, for these courts, impermissible. See F. Frankfurter & N. Greene, The Labor Injunction 26-29 (1930) (hereafter Frankfurter & Greene). While some courts regarded peaceful picketing as permissible if intended to attain lawful objectives, others regarded picketing as always enjoinable. Id., at 30-46. Section 7 abrogated these state laws. It declares that “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection,” including specific types and forms of picketing, are protected from interference from any source. Section 7 further provides that employers no longer have an absolute right to prohibit concerted activities occurring on their properties; unwilling employers frequently are required to suffer the presence of organizational activities on their premises. See NLRB v. Magnavox Co., 415 U. S. 322 (1974); NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105 (1956); Republic Aviation Corp. v. NLRB, 324 U. S. 793 (1945).
*218But the Act did more than displace certain state laws. Section 8 (a) of the Act declares that it is an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with employee exercise of § 7 rights, and § 8 (b) of the Act provides that certain forms of employee activity, including several types of picketing, are unfair labor practices. Congress created the National Labor Relations Board to administer these provisions and prescribed a detailed procedure for the imposition of restraint on any conduct that is violative of the Act: charge and complaint, notice and hearing, and an order pending judicial review.
The animating force behind the doctrine of labor law preemption has been the recognition that nothing could more fully serve to defeat the purposes of the Act than to permit state and federal courts, without any limitation, to exercise jurisdiction over activities that are subject to regulation by the National Labor Relations Board. See Motor Coach Employees v. Lockridge, supra, at 286. Congress created the centralized expert agency to administer the Act because of its conviction — generated by the historic abuses of the labor injunction, see Frankfurter & Greene — that the judicial attitudes, court procedures, and traditional judicial remedies, state and federal, were as likely to produce adjudications incompatible with national labor policy as were different rules of substantive law. See Garner v. Teamsters, 346 U. S. 485, 490-491 (1953). Although Congress could not be understood as having displaced “all local regulation that touches or concerns in any way the complex interrelationships between employers, employees, and unions,” Motor Coach Employees v. Lockridge, supra, at 289, the legislative scheme clearly embodies an implicit prohibition of those state- and federal-court adjudications that might significantly interfere with those interests that are a central concern to national labor policy.
The Act’s treatment of picketing illustrates the nature of the generic problem, and at the same time highlights the issue in this case. While this Court has never held that the preserip*219tion of detailed procedures for the restraint of specific types of picketing and the provision that other types of picketing are protected implies that picketing is to be free from all restraint under state law, see, e. g., Automobile Workers v. Russell, 356 U. S. 634 (1958) (state courts may restrain violent conduct on picket lines), it by the same token necessarily is true that to permit local adjudications, without limitation, of the legality of picketing would threaten intolerable interference with the interests protected by the Act. As the Court, recognizes, the nature of the threatened interference differs depending on whether the picketing implicates the Act’s prohibitions or its protections. See ante, at 190. As to arguably prohibited picketing, there is a risk that the state court might misinterpret or misapply the federal prohibition and restrain conduct that Congress may have intended to be free from governmental restraint.4 But even when state courts can be depended upon accurately to determine whether conduct is in fact prohibited, local adjudication may disrupt the congressional scheme by resulting in different forms of relief than would adjudication by the NLRB. By providing that an expert, centralized agency would administer the Act, Congress quite plainly evidenced an intention that, ordinarily at least, this expert agency should, on the basis of its experience with labor matters, determine the remedial implications of violations of the Act. If state courts were permitted to administer all the Act’s prohibitions, the divergences in relief would add up to significant departures from federal policy. These considerations led the Court to fashion the rule, announced in Garmon, 359 U. S., at 245, that *220state courts have no jurisdiction over “arguably prohibited” conduct.
This aspect of Garmon has never operated as a flat prohibition.5 There are circumstances in which state courts ean be depended upon accurately to determine whether the underlying conduct is prohibited and in which Congress cannot be assumed to have intended to oust, state-court jurisdiction. Illustrative are decisions holding that. States may regulate mass picketing, obstructive picketing, or picketing that threatens or results in violence. See Automobile Workers v. Russell, supra; Automobile Workers v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd., 351 U. S. 266 (1956); Construction Workers v. Laburnum Constr. Corp., 347 U. S. 656 (1954); Electrical Workers v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd., 315 U. S. 740, 749 (1942). Because violent tortious conduct on a picket line is prohibited by § 8 (b) and because state courts can reliably determine whether such conduct has occurred without considering the merits of the underlying labor dispute, allowing local adjudications of these tort actions could neither fetter the exercise of rights, protected by the Act nor otherwise interfere with the effective administration of the federal scheme. And the possible inconsistency of remedy is not alone a sufficient reason for pre-empting state-court jurisdic*221tion. In view of the historic state interest in “such traditionally local matters as public safety and order,” Electrical Workers v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd., supra, at 749, the Act could not, in the absence of a clear statement to the contrary, be construed as precluding the imposition of different, even harsher, state remedies in such cases. See Automobile Workers v. Russell, supra, at 641-642. Indeed, in view of the delay attendant upon resort to the Board, it could well produce positive harm to prohibit state jurisdiction in these circumstances. Our decisions leave no doubt that exceptions to the Garmon principle are to be recognized only in comparable circumstances. See Farmer v. Carpenters, 430 U. S. 290, 297-301 (1977); Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171 (1967); Linn v. Plant Guard Workers, 383 U. S. 53 (1966).
When, on the other hand, the underlying conduct may be protected by the Act, the risk of interference with the federal scheme is of a different character. The danger of permitting local adjudications is not that timing or form of relief might be different from what the Board would administer, but rather that the local court might restrain conduct that is in fact protected by the Act. This might result not merely from attitudinal differences but even more from unfair procedures or lack of expertise in labor relations matters. The present case illustrates both the nature and magnitude of the danger. Because the location of employee picketing is often determinative of the meaningfulness of the employees’ ability to engage in effective communication with their intended audience, employees often have the right to engage in picketing at particular locations, including the private property of another. See Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507 (1976); Scott Hudgens, 230 N. L. R. B. 414, 95 LRRM 1351 (1977); cf. NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105 (1956), The California Superior Court here entered an order, ex parte, broad enough to prohibit all effective picketing of Sears’ store for a period of 35 days, See opinion of my Brother Blackmun, ante, at 212. *222Since labor disputes are usually short lived, see ibid., this possibly erroneous order may well have irreparably altered the balance of the competing economic forces by prohibiting the Union’s use of a permissible economic weapon at a crucial time. Obviously it is not lightly to be inferred that a Congress that provided elaborate procedures for restraint of prohibited picketing and that failed to provide an employer with a remedy against otherwise unprotected picketing could have contemplated that local tribunals with histories of insensitivity to the organizational interests of employees be permitted effectively to enjoin protected picketing.
In recognition of this fact, this Court’s efforts in the area of labor law pre-emption have been largely directed to developing durable principles to ensure that local tribunals not be in a position to restrain protected conduct. Because the Court today appears to have forgotten some of the lessons of history, it is appropriate to summarize this Court’s efforts. The first approach to be tried — and abandoned — was for this Court to proceed on a case-by-case basis and determine whether each particular final state-court ruling “does, or might reasonably be thought to, conflict in some relevant manner with federal labor policy,” Motor Coach Employees v. Lockridge, 403 U. S., at 289-291; see Automobile Workers v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd., 336 U. S. 245 (1949). Not surprisingly, such an effort proved institutionally impossible. Because of the infinite combinations of events that implicate the central protections of the Act, this Court could not, without largely abdicating its other responsibilities, hope to determine on an ad hoc, generic-situation-by-generic-situation basis whether applications of state laws threatened national labor policy. In any case, such an approach necessarily disserved national labor policy because decision by this Court came too late to repair the damage that an erroneous decision would do to the congressionally established balance of power and was no substitute for decision in the first instance by the Board. The *223Court soon concluded that protecting national labor policy from disruption or defeat by conflicting local adjudications demanded broad principles of labor law pre-emption, easily administered by state and federal courts throughout the Nation, that would minimize, if not eliminate entirely, the possibility of decisions of local tribunals that irreparably injure interests protected by § 7. The only rule6 satisfying these dual requirements was Garmon’s flat prohibition: “When an activity is arguably subject to § 7 or § 8 of the Act, the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence of the . . . Board.” 359 U. S., at 245.
While there is some unavoidable uncertainty concerning the arguably prohibited prong of Garmon, I emphasize that it has heretofore been absolutely clear that there is no state power to deal with conduct that is a central concern of the Act7 and arguably protected by it, see Longshoremen v. Ariadne Shipping Co., 397 U. S. 195 (1970); Garmon, supra; Meat Cutters v. Fairlawn Meats, Inc., 353 U. S. 20 (1957); Guss v. Utah Labor Relations Bd., 353 U. S. 1 (1957). As the Court itself recognizes, see ante, at 194-197 and 204, none of the Garmon exceptions have ever been or could ever be applied to local attempts to restrain such conduct. But the Garmon approach to “arguably protected” activity does not “swee[p] away state-court jurisdiction over conduct traditionally subject to *224state regulation without careful consideration of the relative impact of such a jurisdictional bar on the various interests affected.” Ante, at 188. Quite the contrary, such careful consideration is subsumed by the determination whether the underlying conduct may be protected by § 7. By enacting § 7, Congress necessarily intended to pre-empt certain state laws: e. g., those prohibiting concerted activities as conspiracies or unlawful restraints of trade. In any instance in which it can seriously be maintained that the congressionally established scheme protects the employee activity, the assessment of the relative weight of the competing state and federal interests has to be regarded as having been made by Congress. By drafting the statute so as to permit a Board determination ' that the underlying conduct is in fact within the ambit of § 7’s protections, Congress necessarily indicated its view that the historic state interest in regulating .the conduct, however defined, may have to yield to the attainment of other objectives and that the state interest thus must be regarded as less than compelling. And, of course, there is necessarily a possibility that to permit state-court jurisdiction over arguably protected conduct could fetter the exercise of rights protected by the Act and otherwise interfere with the congressional scheme. A local tribunal could recognize an activity as arguably protected, yet, given its attitude toward organized labor, lack of expertise in labor matters, and insensitive procedures, misapply or misconceive the Board’s decisional criteria and restrain conduct that is within the ambit of § 7.
II
The present case illustrates both the necessity of this flat rule and the danger of even the slightest deviation from it. The present case, of course, is a classic one for pre-emption. The question submitted to the state court was whether the Union had a protected right to locate peaceful nonobstructive pickets on the privately owned walkway adjacent to Sears’ *225retail store or on the privately owned parking lot a few feet away.
A
That the trespass was arguably protected could scarcely be clearer. NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S., at 112, indicates that trespassory § 7 activity is protected when “reasonable efforts . . . through other available channels” will not enable the union to reach its intended audience. This standard, which was developed in the context of a rather different factual situation, is but an application of more general principles. “[T]he basic objective under the Act [is the] accommodation of § 7 rights and private property rights ‘with as little destruction of one as is consistent with the maintenance of the other.’ The locus of that accommodation, however, may fall at differing points along the spectrum depending on the nature and strength of the respective § 7 rights and private property rights asserted in any given context.” Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S., at 522, quoting NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., supra, at 112; see Scott Hudgens, 230 N. L. R. B., at 417, 95 LRRM, at 1354.
Here, it can seriously be contended that the locus of the accommodation should be on the side of permitting the trespass. The § 7 interest is strong: The object of the picketing was arguably protected on one of two theories- — as “area standards” 8 or as “recognitional” 9 picketing — and the record suggests that the relocation of the picketing to the nearest public area — a public sidewalk 150 to 200 feet away — may have so *226diluted the picketing’s impact as to make it virtually meaningless.10 The private property interest, in contrast, was exceedingly weak. The picketing was confined to a portion of Sears’ property which was open to the public and on which Sears had permitted solicitations by other groups.11 Thus, while Sears to be sure owned the property, it resembled public property in many respects. Indeed, while Sears’ legal position would have been quite different if the lot and walkways had been owned by the city of Chula Vista, it is doubtful that Sears would have been any less angered or upset by the picketing if the property had in fact been public.
But the Court refuses to follow the simple analysis that has been sanctioned by the decisions of the last 20 years. Its reasons for discarding prior teachings, apparently, is a belief that faithful application of Garmon to the generic situation presented by this case causes positive social harm. I disagree.
It bears emphasizing that Garmon only partially pre-empts an employer’s remedies against unlawful trespassory picketing. A state court may, of course, enjoin any picketing that is clearly unprotected by the Act: e. g., peaceful, nonobstructive picketing occurring within a retail store. See Brief for Respondent 30 n. 14, citing NLRB v. Fansteel Corp., 306 U. S. 240 (1939); Marshall Field & Co. v. NLRB, 200 F. 2d 375 (CA7 1953); Brief for NLRB as Amicus Curiae 15 n. 9. And, as already indicated, state courts have jurisdiction over picket*227ing that is obstructive, or involves large groups of persons, or otherwise entails a serious threat of violence. Automobile Workers v. Russell; Construction Workers v. Laburnum Constr. Corp.; Automobile Workers v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd.; Electrical Workers v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd. These decisions constitute an almost disposi-tive answer to my Brother Powell’s suggestion that state trespass laws should be allowed full play, see ante, at 213: most of the factual situations that concern him fall within a recognized Garmon exception. Finally, an employer may file an unfair labor practice charge under § 8 (b) and obtain a “cease and desist” order from the Board where the picketing has an objective prohibited by § 8 (b).
Thus, pre-emption of state-court jurisdiction to deal with trespassory picketing has been largely, if not entirely, confined to situations such as presented in this case, i. e., in which the interest of the employer in preventing the picketing is weak, the § 7 interest in picketing on the employer’s property strong, and the picketing peaceful and nonobstructive. In this circumstance, I think the denial to the employer of a remedy is an entirely acceptable social cost for the benefits of a pre-emption rule that avoids the danger of state-court interference with national labor policy. The Court’s arguments to the contrary are singularly unpersuasive. Because an employer’s remedies are only pre-empted in the narrow circumstances of a case such as the present one, any suggestion that the faithful application of Garmon creates a “no-man’s land” which results in a substantial risk of violence, see opinion of my Brother Blackmun, ante, at 208; opinion of my Brother Powell, ante, at 213; cf. opinion of the Court, ante, at 202, can be dismissed as the most unfounded speculation. An employer like Sears may be angered or outraged by the presence of peaceful, nonobstructive picketing close to its retail store. But the Act requires the employer’s toleration of peaceful picketing when § 7 affords the union the right to engage in this form of *228economic pressure. There is simply no basis whatsoever for a conclusion that the risk of violence is any greater when an employer is told by a state court that Garmon bars his state trespass action than when he is told either that § 7 protects picketing on a public area immediately adjacent to his business, cf. Longshoremen v. Ariadne Shipping Co., or that § 7 in fact privileges the entry onto his property. Cf. Scott Hudgens.
In apparent recognition of this indisputable fact, the Court places no great reliance on the likelihood of violence. But the only other reason advanced for a conclusion that Garmon produces socially intolerable results is that it is “anomalous” to deny an employer a trespass remedy. Since the Act extensively regulates the conditions under which an employer’s proprietary rights must yield to the exercise of § 7 rights, I am at a loss as to why the anomaly here is any greater than that which results from the pre-emption of state remedies against tortious conspiracies, compare § 7 of the Act with Frankfurter & Greene 26-39, or from the pre-emption of state remedies against nonmalieious libels. See Linn v. Plant Guard Workers, 383 U. S. 53 (1966).
B
That this Court’s departure from Garmon creates a great risk that protected picketing will be enjoined is amply illustrated by the facts of this case and by the task that was assigned to the California Superior Court. To decide whether the location of the Union’s picketing rendered it unlawful, the state court here had to address a host of exceedingly complex labor law questions, which implicated nearly every aspect of the Union’s labor dispute with Sears and which were uniquely within the province of the Board. Because it had to assess the “relative strength of the § 7 right,” see Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S., at 522, its first task necessarily was to determine the nature of the Union’s picketing. This picketing could have *229been characterized in one of three ways: as protected area-standards picketing, see opinion of the Court, ante, at 186-187 ; as prohibited picketing to compel a reassignment of work, see ante, at 185-186, and n. 9; or as recognitions! picketing that is protected at the outset but prohibited if no petition for a representative election is filed within a reasonable time, not to exceed 30 days. See supra, at 225 n. 9; ante, at 186, and n. 10. Notably, if the state court concluded that the picketing was prohibited by § 8 (b) (4)— or unprotected by § 7 on any other theory — that determination would have been conclusive against respondent: Whether or not the state court agreed with the Union’s contention that effective communication required that picketing be located on Sears’ premises, the court would enjoin the trespassory picketing on the ground that no protected § 7 interest was involved. Obviously, since even the Court admits that the characterization of the picketing “entail [s] relatively complex factual and legal determinations,” see ante, at 198, there is a substantial danger that the state court, lacking the Board’s expertise and specialized sensitivity to labor relations matters, would err at the outset and effectively deny respondent the right to engage in any effective § 7 communication.12
But even if the state court correctly assesses the § 7 interest, there are a host of other pitfalls. A myriad of factors are or *230could be relevant to determining whether § 7 protected the trespass: e. g., whether and to what extent relocating the picketing on the nearest public property 150 feet away would have diluted its impact; whether the picketing was characterized as recognitional or area standards; whether or the extent to which Sears had opened the property up to the public or permitted similar solicitation on it; whether it mattered that the pickets did not work for Sears, etc. And if relevant, each of these factors would suggest a number of subsidiary inquiries.
' It simply cannot be seriously contended that the thousands of judges, state and federal, throughout the United States can be counted upon accurately to identify the relevant considerations and give each the proper weight in accommodating the respective rights. Indeed, the actions of the California courts illustrate the danger. Not only was the ex parte order of the California Superior Court entered under conditions precluding careful consideration of all relevant considerations, even the Court of Appeal, presumably able to devote more time and deliberation to isolate the correct decisional criteria, failed properly to appreciate the significance of a criterion critical to the application of national law: that the distance of the picketing from a store entrance is largely determinative of its effectiveness. Cf. Scott Hudgens, 230 N. L. R. B., at 417, 95 LRRM, at 1354 (“a message announced ... by picket sign . .. a [substantial] distance from the focal point would be too greatly diluted to be meaningful”). Nothing better demonstrates the wisdom of the heretofore settled rule that “the primary responsibility for making [the] accommodation [between § 7 rights and private property rights] must rest with the Board in the first instance.” Hudgens v. NLRB, supra, at 522.
The Court does not deny that its decision may well result in state-court decisions erroneously prohibiting or curtailing conduct in fact protected by § 7. But it identifies two con*231siderations that persuade it that the risk of interference is minimal and that, in any case, the risk does not outweigh the anomalous consequence of denying the employer a remedy.
The first is its belief that the generic type of activity— which the Court characterizes as trespassory organizational activity by nonemployees — is more likely to be unprotected than protected. Ante, at 205-206. In so concluding, the Court relies on NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105 (1956), for the proposition that there is a strong presumption against permitting trespasses by nonemployees. But the Court overlooks a critical distinction between Babcock and the case at bar. Babcock involved a trespass on industrial property which the employer had fenced off from the public at large, and it is a grave error to treat Babcock as having substantial implications for the generic situation presented by this case. To permit trespassory § 7 activities in the Babcock fact pattern entails far greater interference with an employer’s business than does allowing peaceful nonobstructive picketing on a parking lot which is open to the public and which has been used for other types of solicitation. As my Brother Blackmun’s concurring opinion notes, this Court’s short-lived holding that picketing at shopping centers is protected by. the Fourteenth Amendment, see Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U. S. 308 (1968), overruled in Hudgens v. NLRB, supra, has resulted in a situation where neither this Court nor the Board has considered, in any comprehensive fashion, the quite different question of the conditions under which union representatives may enter privately owned areas of shopping centers to engage in protected activities such as peaceful picketing. But the Court’s own opinion in Hudgens v. NLRB, supra, and the Board’s decision in Scott Hudgens, supra,13 both suggest that *232trespasses in such circumstances will often be protected. Quite apart from the fact the Court has no basis for blithely assuming that all private property is fungible, that this Court would fail to appreciate so possibly vital a distinction in assessing the strength of a § 7 claim illustrates the danger of permitting lower courts, which lack even this Court’s exposure to labor law, to rule on the question whether trespassory picketing by nonemployees is protected.
The Court’s second reason is more problematic still. It urges that the risk that local adjudications will interfere with protected § 7 activity is “minimized by the fact that in the cases in which the argument in favor of protection is the strongest, the union is likely to invoke the Board’s jurisdiction and thereby avoid the state forum.” Ante, at 206. That, with all respect, betrays ignorance of the conduct of adversaries in the real world of labor disputes. Whether a union will seek the protection of a Board order will depend upon whether that tactic will best serve its self-interest, and that determination will depend in turn on whether the employer’s request inhibits or interferes with the union’s ability to engage in protected conduct. A request that a trespass cease may or may not so threaten the union as to lead it to go to the trouble and expense of attempting to invoke the Board’s jurisdiction, and the strength of the argument that the conduct is protected will frequently be a factor of no relevance. For example, if the union perceives the employer’s request as a hollow threat or believes that the employer’s legal position in any case has no merit, the union will have no reason to turn to the Board.
It might, on the other hand, be the case that the union *233would have more of an incentive to file a §8 (a)(1) charge if it believed that resort to the Board were necessary to protect itself against adjudications by hostile state tribunals. Of course, even then, the union may not believe that invocation of the Board’s jurisdiction is worth the trouble and expense in those instances in which it believes its own legal position unassailable. But there is no point in conjecturing on this score. The Court assiduously avoids holding that resort to the Board will oust a state court’s jurisdiction14 and is divided on this question. Compare opinion of my Brother Blackmun, ante, at 208-210, with opinion of my Brother Powell, ante, p. 212. The Court cannot have it both ways: Unless and until the Court decides that the filing of a charge pre-empts adjudications by local tribunals, speculation as to the conditions under which there would or would not be a failure to file is an idle exercise.15
*234Ill
But what is far more disturbing than the specific holding in this case is its implications for different generic situations. Whatever the shortcomings of Garmon, none can deny the necessity for a rule in this complex area that is capable of uniform application by the lower courts. The Court’s new exception to Garmon cannot be expected to be correctly applied by those courts and thus most inevitably will threaten erosion of the goal of uniform administration of the national labor laws. Even though the Court apparently intends to create only a very narrow exception to Garmon — largely if not entirely limited to situations in which the employer first requested the nonemployees engaged in area-standards picketing on the employer’s property to remove the pickets from the employer’s land and the union did not respond by filing § 8 (a)(1) unfair labor practice charges — the approach the Court today adopts cannot be so easily cabined and thus threatens intolerable disruption of national labor policy.
Because § 8 (b) only affords an employer a remedy against certain types of unprotected employee activity, there necessarily will be a myriad of circumstances in which an employer will be confronted with possibly unprotected employee or union conduct, and yet be unable directly to invoke the Board’s processes to receive a determination of the protected *235character of the conduct. Today’s decision certainly opens the door to a conclusion by state and federal courts that the Court’s new exception applies in any situation where the employer has requested that the labor organization cease what the employer claims is unprotected conduct and the union has not responded by filing a § 8 (a) (1) charge. In that circumstance, today’s decision sanctions a three-step process by the state or federal court.
First, the court must inquire whether the employer had a “reasonable opportunity” to force a Board determination. What constitutes a “reasonable opportunity”? I have to assume from today’s decision that the employer can never be deemed to have an acceptable opportunity when nonemployees are engaged in the arguably protected activity. But what if employees are involved? Will the fact that the employer can provoke the filing of an unfair labor practice charge by disciplining the employee always constitute an acceptable alternative? Perhaps so, but the Court provides no guidance that can help the local judges. Some may believe that the fact that any discipline will enhance the seriousness of the unfair labor practice renders that course unacceptable. Similarly, what of the instances in which employer discipline might not, under the circumstances, provoke the filing of a charge: e. g., if an economic strike were in progress?
Second, if the lower court concludes that the employer did not have an acceptable means of placing the protection issue before the Board, it must then proceed to inquire whether, in light of its assessment of the strength of the argument that § 7 might protect the generic type of conduct involved, there is a substantial likelihood that its adjudication will be incompatible with national labor policy. This is a particularly onerous task to assign to judges having no special expertise or specialized sensitivity in the application of the federal labor laws, and it is not clairvoyant to predict that many local tribunals will misconceive the relevant criteria and erroneously *236conclude that they are capable of correctly applying the labor laws. With all respect, the Court’s opinion proves my point. As I have already observed, in concluding that peaceful picketing upon Sears’ walkway was more likely to be unprotected than protected, the Court makes an entirely unfounded assumption concerning the approach the Board is likely to apply to the organizational activities of nonemployees at shopping centers. Since the great majority of state and federal judges around the Nation rarely, if ever, have this Court’s exposure to the federal labor laws, local tribunals surely will commit far more grievous errors in assessing the likelihood that its adjudication will subvert national labor policy. But the final step in the Court’s new pre-emption inquiry is the most troublesome: The range of circumstances in which local tribunals might conclude that the anomaly of denying an employer a remedy outweighs the risk of erroneous determinations by the state courts is limitless. Many erroneous determinations of non-pre-emption are certain to occur, and the local adjudications of the protection issues will inevitably often be inconsistent and contrary to national policy.
This prospect should give the Court more concern than its opinion reflects. It is no answer that errors remain correctible while this Court sits. The burden that will be thrown upon this Court finally to decide, on an ad hoc, generic-situation-by-generic-situation basis, whether the employer had a “reasonable opportunity” to obtain a Board determination and, if not, whether the risk of interference outweighs the anomaly of denying the employer a remedy, should give us pause. Inconsistency and error in decisions below may compel review of an inordinate number of cases, lest lower court adjudications threaten irretrievable injury to interests protected by § 7. Indeed, the experience of 30 years ago should, I would have thought, taught us the folly of such an approach. And our burden will be even greater if, as my Brother Blackmun suggests, ante, at 211-212, this Court must fashion a code of *237“labor law due process” to minimize the risk of erroneous state-court determinations of protection questions.
I do not doubt that this Court could, if it wished, minimize the deleterious consequences of today’s unfortunate decision. But the Court cannot prevent it from introducing inconsistency and confusion that will threaten the fabric of national labor policy and from imposing new and unnecessary burdens on this Court. Adherence to Garmon would spare us and the Nation these burdens. Because the Court has not demonstrated that Garmon produces an unacceptable accommodation of the conflicting state and federal interests, I respectfully dissent.

 See infra, at 225-226.

 Garmon announced the following test of labor law pre-emption:
“When it is clear or may fairly be assumed that the activities which a State purports to regulate are protected by § 7 of the [Act] or constitute an unfair labor practice under § 8, due regard for the federal enactment requires that state jurisdiction must yield. . . . [And] [w]hen an activity is arguably subject to §'7 or § 8 of the Act, the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence of the National Labor Relations Board if the danger of state interference with national policy is to be averted.” 359 U. S., at 244-245.
This rule, which was implicit in earlier decisions, has been repeatedly reaffirmed. See, e. g., Farmer v. Carpenters, 430 U. S. 290 (1977); Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm’n, 427 U. S. 132, 138-139 (1976); Motor Coach Employees v. Lockridge, 403 U. S. 274 (1971).

 Although the Court also misapplies the “arguably prohibited” prong of the Garmon test, see n. 12, infra, I concentrate on its modification of the “arguably protected” prong because this aspect of the decision has far greater significance.

 One danger, of course, is that a state court’s misinterpretation of the federal prohibition may result in restraining conduct that in fact is protected by the Act. The “arguably protected” prong of Garmon addresses this risk. A second danger is that the state court’s misconception or misapplication of the law may result in the imposition of restraints on conduct that is neither protected nor prohibited by the Act, but which Congress intended to be free from government control. See Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm’n, 427 U. S. 132 (1976).

 There are several arguably discrete exceptions to Garmon, all sharing a common characteristic. Each applies only in circumstances in. which local adjudications will not threaten important interests protected by the Act: e. g., when a state court can ascertain the actual legal significance of particular conduct by reference to “compelling precedent applied to essentially undisputed facts,” Garmon, 359 U. S., at 246; when the rule to be invoked before the state tribunal is “so structured and administered that, in virtually all instances, it is safe to presume that judicial supervision will not disserve the interests promoted by the [Act],” Motor Coach Employees v. Lockridge, 403 U. S., at 297-298; “where the activity regulated was merely a peripheral concern of the [Act or) ... touched interests so deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility that, in the absence of compelling congressional direction, we could not infer that Congress had deprived the States of the power to act.” Garmon, supra, at 243-244.

 A second approach was suggested and rejected by Garmon itself: that state-court jurisdiction be pre-empted only when “it is clear or may fairly be assumed that the activities which a State purports to regulate are protected by § 7 of the .. . Act.” 359 U. S., at 244. This Court recognized that state and federal courts, quite simply, lack the familiarity and requisite sensitivity to labor law matters to be counted on accurately to determine which combinations of facts could “fairly be assumed” to fall within the ambit of § 7.

 If an activity were merely a “peripheral concern” of the Act, state and federal courts presumably may restrain it even if arguably protected. See Garmon, 359 U. S., at 246.

 See Longshoremen v. Ariadne Shipping Co., 397 U. S. 195 (1970).

 The Act provides that recognitional picketing is prohibited if no representation petition is filed within a reasonable time, not to exceed 30 days. See ante, at 186, and n. 10. Although the Board has never held that recognitional picketing is protected at the outset and for up to 30 days thereafter, this conclusion would seem to follow from its holding that “area standards” picketing is protected. See Hod Carriers (Calumet Contractors Assn.), 133 N. L. R. B. 512 (1961).

 Although the matter is disputed, a Union representative testified that picketing from the public sidewalk adjacent to the outer perimeters of Sears’ parking lot was totally ineffective and that, for this reason, the California Superior Court’s temporary restraining order required the Union to abandon the picketing. App. 28.

 Sears permitted solicitation and distribution of literature on its property in the cases of the Lion’s Club white cane drive, the Salvation Army at Christmas time, and the League of Women Voters for voter registration. Id,., at 14. The fact of prior soli citation simply confirms what would have been clear in any case: that the Union picketing was not incompatible with the retail operations.

 Since the whole premise for an order effectively terminating all picketing of the Sears store could be the state court's conclusion that the picketing was prohibited by § 8 (b), it is difficult to understand how the Court can assert that this is a case in which the “arguably prohibited” prong of the Garmon test is not implicated. Even if the Court is correct that the crucial consideration under that aspect of Garmon is whether the controversy in the state court would be the same as that which would have been presented to the NLRB, see ante, at 197, the test surely is satisfied here. More fundamentally, to permit a state court to enter an order which, in law and fact, prohibits picketing because of an interpretation of § 8 (b) entails a substantial risk of interference with the objectives Congress sought to achieve by giving the Board exclusive jurisdiction to enforce § 8 (b).

 In Scott Hudgens, the Board held that warehouse employees of a shoe company had a § 7 right to engage in protected picketing on a privately owned shopping mall that contained one of the shoe company’s retail outlets. Since the warehouse employees were no more “rightfully *232on the employer’s premises” than were the pickets in the present case, see Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S., at 521-522, n. 10, Scott Hudgens at least indicates that the fact that an individual has no right to be on the premises is not a factor of any special significance in the context of shopping center picketing. It would be a small step to conclude that the fact the pickets were nonemployees did not, standing alone at least, counsel strongly against a finding that the trespass was unprotected.

 The Court leaves open a host of questions concerning the availability of state-court remedies to the precise type of trespassory picketing that here occurred: Is state-court jurisdiction pre-empted when a §8 (a)(1) charge is filed before the institution of state suit? What if the § 8 (a) (1) charge is filed after the employer files the state-court complaint, or after the state court has issued temporary, preliminary, or final relief; must the state-court action and state-court order be stayed pending the Board proceedings or is it up to the Board to take action to protect its jurisdiction? Since the generic situation is one in which there is no realistic possibility of violence, I think my Brother Blackmun’s logic in answering some of these questions is unassailable, see ante, at 208-210. Indeed, 1 would think the Court would be compelled to extend it to a situation my Brother Blackmun does not address: when the state court has entered final relief. But especially in light of my Brother Powell’s differing views, see ante, p. 212, it can safely be predicted that the state and federal courts around the country will answer these questions in a variety of ways. A consequence surely will be that erroneous determinations of non-preemption will occur and rights and interests protected by the Act will be irreparably damaged before any corrective action can be taken by this Court.

 It should be apparent that to require employees to file §8 (a)(1) charges to avoid hostile local adjudications itself would entail a certain *234disruption of the congressional scheme. Section 8 (a) (1) was intended to afford employees a remedy in those circumstances in which they felt it was in their self-interest to seek protection by the Board. Congress by the same token plainly intended not to afford employers a remedy before the Board whenever they were confronted with arguably unprotected conduct. If the Court takes the position that employees can avoid hostile state-court adjudications of their rights only by filing § 8 (a) (1) charges whenever employers threaten interference with arguably protected activity, the effect would be to stand the congressional scheme on its head. The employers would in effect be invoking the Board’s jurisdiction under conditions in which the employees have no interest in obtaining the Board’s protection.