Court Opinion

ID: 9427647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:29.406177+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.273029
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice White and Mr. Justice Marshall join,
concurring in the judgment.
In this case, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that respondent had demonstrated the special circumstances necessary to overcome the NLRB’s presumption against bans on solicitation, and that there was no substantial *794evidence to support the Board’s holding to the contrary. The scope of our review of such a Court of Appeals finding is narrowly circumscribed:
“ ‘Whether on the record as a whole there is substantial evidence to support agency findings is a question which Congress has placed in the keeping of the Courts of Appeals. This Court will intervene only in what ought to be the rare instance when the standard appears to have been misapprehended or grossly misapplied.’ ” Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, 437 U. S. 483, 507 (1978), quoting Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U. S. 474, 491 (1951).
Because I believe that the Court of Appeals “misapprehended or grossly misapplied” the substantial-evidence rule with respect to the cafeteria, gift shop, and first-floor lobbies of Baptist Hospital, but that the .same cannot be said for the patient-floor corridors and sitting rooms, I concur in the judgment of the Court.
I
As the Court notes, “[t]he Hospital presented no clear evidence of the frequency with which patients use the cafeteria and gift shop, or visit the lobbies on the first floor,” ante, at 786. See App. 11-13, 27, 36-38. In fact, the evidence demonstrated that patients normally remain on floors above the first floor, id., at 20, 28, 35-36, 64; that they must have special permission to leave the floor on which their room is located, or to eat in the cafeteria, id., at 64; Baptist Hospital, Inc., 223 N. L. R. B. 344, 348 (1976); and that only a small number of patients actually use the cafeteria, App. 50, 64; 223 N. L. R. B., at 348. See generally, ante, at 786-787. Given such evidence, the Hospital could not have overcome the Board’s presumption against solicitation bans in nonimme-diate patient-care areas — that is, the Hospital could not have met its affirmative burden to demonstrate that the prohibition was “necessary to avoid disruption of health-care operations or *795disturbance of patients,” Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, supra, at 507. Since there clearly was substantial evidence to support the Board’s determination that the presumption was not overcome, the Court of Appeals’ holding to the contrary constituted a gross misapplication of the appropriate standard of review of Board findings.*
The same Cannot be said of the Court of Appeals’ holding with respect to those corridors and sitting rooms which adjoin, or are accessible to, the patient and treatment rooms on the upper floors. There was evidence that “[p]atients in the most critical and fragile conditions often move or are moved through these corridors, either en route to treatment in some other part of the Hospital or as part of their convalescence,” ante, at 784. See App. 54, 64. Considerable additional evidence, including the testimony of two doctors, suggested that in this hospital, in these areas, a prohibition of solicitation was necessary to avoid disruption of health-care operations or disturbance of patients. See ante, at 782-784. This does not *796mean that were this Court reviewing the evidence de novo, or even were it applying the standard of review appropriate for the Court of Appeals, it would have been inexorably driven to conclude that the presumption against no-solicitation rules was adequately overcome. But we do not sit as a court of first, or even second, instance. We cannot overturn the Court of Appeals’ decision as to the substantiality of the evidence unless it misapprehended or grossly misapplied the appropriate standard of review. And given the evidence presented on the questions concerning the upper floors of the hospital, I cannot say that the appellate court so erred here.
II
Both this opinion, and that of the Court, base their dispositions of the Board’s petition upon the evidence presented in this case; neither rejects the legality of the presumption which the Board applied. See ante, at 789. In dicta, however, the Court questions the application of the presumption to the corridors and sitting rooms of floors occupied by patients. See ante, at 788-789. I do not share these sentiments.
“[T]he development of . . . presumptions is normally the function of the Board,” ante, at 789, and its conclusions on such matters are traditionally accorded considerable deference. See NLRB v. Iron Workers, 434 U. S. 335, 350 (1978); NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U. S. 251, 266-267 (1975). Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, supra, at 500-501, made it clear that Board decisions in the health-care area are no exception to this rule. Although it is true that hospitals “give rise to unique considerations that do not apply in . . . industrial settings,” and that the Board should therefore “stand ready to revise its rulings if future experience demonstrates that the well-being of patients is in fact jeopardized,” ante, at 790, quoting Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, supra, at 508, it is also true that the Board has shown itself to be sensitive to the difference between the hospital and the industrial work*797place. Indeed, the very presumption at issue in this case reflects that sensitivity. As the Court itself notes:
“Because its usual presumption that rules against solicitation on nonwork time are invalid gives too little weight to the need to avoid disruption of patient care and disturbance of patients in the hospital setting, the Board has indicated that it will not regard as presumptively invalid proscriptions on solicitation in immediate patient-care areas.” Ante, at 778.
Judges, like most of the rest of the public, experience hospitals solely as patients. It is the Board, by contrast, which confronts every day the complexities of labor relations policy in the health-care area. And it is for that reason “that the 1974 amendments vested responsibility” in the Board “for developing that policy in the health-care industry.” Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, 437 U. S., at 501. As we explained in Beth Israel:
“Here, as in many other contexts of labor policy, £[t]he ultimate problem is the balancing of the conflicting legitimate interests. The function of striking that balance to effectuate national labor policy is often a difficult and delicate responsibility, which the Congress committed primarily to the National Labor Relations Board, subject to limited judicial review.’ . . . The judicial role is narrow: The rule which the Board adopts is.judicially reviewable for consistency with the Act, and for rationality, but if it satisfies those criteria, the Board’s application of the rule, if supported by substantial evidence on the record as a whole, must be enforced.” Ibid.
At this stage, I do not believe there is any warrant for second-guessing the Board’s handling of its “difficult and delicate responsibility” in this sensitive area of labor-management relations.

The Court of Appeals’ misapplication of the standard of review of evidence may have been partially due to its misapprehension of the legal merits of the Board’s presumption as applied to cafeterias. Although the court based its holding primarily upon a factual finding that the Hospital “did carry its burden in the present case” to establish the circumstances justifying a ban on solicitation, it also questioned the legal distinction which the Board makes between hospital cafeterias and public restaurants. See 576 F. 2d 107, 110 (1978). The Court of Appeals noted that the Board’s insistence upon applying the presumption to the former, while not applying it to the latter, was rejected by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Baylor University Medical Center v. NLRB, 188 U. S. App. D. C. 109, 578 F. 2d 351 (1978).
Subsequent to the Court of Appeals decision below, we upheld the NLRB’s distinction between public and hospital cafeterias, Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, 437 U. S., at 505-507, and vacated the decision of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on that question. See NLRB v. Baylor University Medical Center, 439 U. S. 9 (1978). It may well be that had the court below had the benefit of our decision in Beth Israel, it might have viewed more favorably the Board’s findings concerning Baptist Hospital’s cafeteria.