Court Opinion

ID: 9430406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:40.377849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.395446
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
dissenting.
The city of Los Angeles refused to renew Golden State’s taxicab franchise unless it settled a labor dispute with its drivers. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated that “[njothing in the record indicates that the City’s refusal to renew or extend Golden State’s franchise until an agreement was reached and operations resumed was not concerned with transportation.” 754 F. 2d 830, 833 (1985). Nonetheless, the Court today holds that “a city cannot condition a franchise renewal in a way that intrudes into the collective-bargaining process.” Ante, at 619. The extraordinary breadth of the Court’s holding is best illustrated by comparing it to this Court’s initial cases involving federal labor preemption.
In Bethlehem Steel Co. v. New York State Labor Relations Board, 330 U. S. 767 (1947), this Court addressed the permissible scope of state regulation of labor disputes by examining New York’s so-called Little Wagner Act, under which foremen were permitted to unionize. The status of foremen under the federal Act had been a matter of dispute at the time that New York asserted its right to supervise the organization of a union of foremen at the Bethlehem Steel Company plant in that State. See id., at 770. The State argued that its labor relations machinery could operate at least until similar benefits for foremen were sought by the union under the federal Act. See id., at 771. This Court held that the federal law pre-empted the state law on this point; both dealt with exactly the same subject matter and *621whether or not they were the same or different with respect to the permissibility of organizing foremen made no difference. Id., at 775. If they were the same, the procedures were duplicative. Id., at 776. If they were different, they were potentially antagonistic. Ibid.
Six years later, in Garner v. Teamsters, 346 U. S. 485 (1953), the Court was presented with a claim of pre-emption under the Taft-Hartley Act, which imposed regulations and duties on labor correlative to the those imposed on management by the Wagner Act. The case involved unionized drivers who had engaged in conduct clearly prohibited by the Taft-Hartley Act, which might have made them subject to a cease-and-desist order by the National Labor Relations Board. See id., at 486-487. But instead of resorting to the federal agency, the employer successfully sought an injunction against the prohibited picketing from a Pennsylvania state court. See id., at 487. This Court held that state duplication of remedies provided by the National Labor Relations Act was pre-empted even though the state remedy was provided by a court rather than a state labor agency. See id., at 487, 499-501.
The opinions in both Bethlehem Steel and Garner observed that Congress had furnished no guidance to the Court as to whether or not state regulation should be pre-empted:
“Congress has not seen fit to lay down even the most general of guides to construction of the Act, as it sometimes does, by saying that its regulation either shall or shall not exclude state action.” Bethlehem Steel, supra, at 771.
“The national Labor Management Relations Act, as we have before pointed out, leaves much to the states, though Congress has refrained from telling us how much.” Garner, supra, at 488 (footnote omitted).
The Court stated in both that it was forced simply to divine the will of Congress by implication:
*622“[The] exclusion of state action may be implied from the nature of the legislation and the subject matter although express declaration of such result is wanting.” Bethlehem Steel, supra, at 772.
“We must spell out from conflicting indications of congressional will the area in which state action is still permissible.” Garner, supra, at 488.
From the acorns of these two very sensible decisions has grown the mighty oak of this Court’s labor pre-emption doctrine, which sweeps ever outward though still totally uninformed by any express directive from Congress. The National Labor Relations Board, organized management, and organized labor have vied with each other in urging the Court to sweep into the maw of labor relations law concerns that would have been regarded as totally peripheral to that body of law by the Congresses which enacted the Wagner Act and the Taft-Hartley Act.
Today we are told that a city, not seeking to place its weight on one side or the other of the scales of economic warfare, may not condition the renewal of a taxicab franchise on the settlement of a labor dispute. The settlement of that dispute would have enabled the company to put its taxis back on the streets where the franchise presumably contemplated they would be. The Court says that since the Labor Board may not structure an ideal balance of collective-bargaining weapons, the city may not consider the existence of a labor dispute in deciding whether to renew a franchise. See ante, at 619-620. We are further told that because a State may not legislate to provide uninterrupted service to the public by prohibiting a strike of public utility employees, a city may not act upon its views of sound transportation policy to refuse to renew a taxi franchise unless the franchisee settles a labor dispute and returns its cabs to the purpose for which the franchise exists. See ante, at 617-618. Such sweeping generalizations commend themselves neither to common sense nor to whatever hypothetical “intent of Congress” as can be *623discerned in an area so remote from the core concerns of labor-management relations addressed by federal labor law.
Federal pre-emption of state law is a matter of congressional intent, presumed or expressed. Because Congress cannot foresee the various ways in which state laws might rub up against the operation of federal statutes, the Court in a multitude of cases has held state regulation pre-empted even when Congress has not expressed any intent to preempt because of the danger that the existence of federal and state regulations side by side will interfere with the achievement of the objectives of the federal legislation. The entire body of this Court’s labor law pre-emption doctrine has been built on a series of implications as to congressional intent in the face of congressional silence, so that we now have an elaborate pre-emption doctrine traceable not to any expression of Congress, but only to statements by this Court in its previous opinions of what Congress must have intended.
The Court today doffs its hat to the legislative history of the Wagner Act and comes up with the following three items:
“[1] The Senate Report states: ‘Disputes about wages, hours of work, and other working conditions should continue to be resolved by the play of competitive forces .... This bill in no respect regulates or even provides for supervision of wages or hours, nor does it establish any form of compulsory arbitration.’
“[2] Senator Wagner, sponsor of the NLRA, said that the Board would not usurp the role of free collective action.
“[3] Senator Wagner affirm[ed] that the Act encourages ‘voluntary settlement of industrial disputes.’” Ante, at 617 (citations omitted).
These three bits of legislative history furnish absolutely no support for the result the Court reaches today. The observations that the Wagner Act leaves it to the parties to resolve their disputes by the play of competitive forces, that the Labor Board would not usurp the role of free collective *624action, and that the Act encourages voluntary settlement of industrial disputes, simply do not speak to the question whether a city may condition the renewal of a taxicab franchise on the settlement of a labor dispute. I do not believe that Congress intended the labor law net to be cast this far, and I therefore dissent.