Alaska Employment Law

Introduction

The United States Supreme Court issued an opinion on December 8, 2009, clarifying practice before the Board in Railway Labor Act cases. The case is Union Pacific Railroad Company v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, ___ U.S. ___ (2009). This summary briefly reviews the case and its significance.

Case

Five union members filed grievances after Union Pacific disciplined them. Grievances under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) require an exhaustion process by which parties first conclude grievance hearings at the shop location (so-called “on property” proceedings). As part of the on property proceedings, the parties are required to conference to see if they can resolve the dispute before proceeding to a full hearing. The Union and Union Pacific met to conference, but they never documented that conference in the “on property” record.

After the on property proceedings were concluded, the Union sought arbitration by appealing to the National Railroad Adjustment Board. The Board dismissed for lack of jurisdiction because the Union did not show that any conference had been held in the on property proceedings (there was no written documentation of that fact). The district court upheld the Board’s decision. The Seventh Circuit reversed. The court agreed that a conference during on property proceedings was required. The court also acknowledged that Board regulations were clear that parties must submit all evidence to the Board.

However, the regulations did not seem to address evidence of the conferencing, but instead evidence related to the merits of the dispute. The court concluded that there were no clear guidelines concerning when and how parties were supposed to present evidence of the conference. Therefore, the court determined that the Board denied the Union adequate due process because the Board had effectively adopted a new rule without notice. Union Pacific sought and secured certiorari.

Opinion

The Court affirmed, but did so on alternate statutory grounds. The Court concluded that the “on property” proceedings were not a jurisdictional element that had to be established prior to Board review. Instead, it was simply a claims processing subject that was never disputed in this case. The Court criticized the Seventh Circuit for resolving the case on constitutional due process grounds.

Significance

The issue here implicates an ongoing circuit split concerning review under the RLA. The RLA specifies three grounds for overturning a Board decision: failure to comply with the RLA, exceeding the Board’s jurisdictional scope, or fraud or corruption by a Board member.

Due process challenges are not included in the grounds allowing for court review. Therefore, the Third, Sixth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have held that alleged due process violations cannot be reviewed. The Second, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits have held otherwise.

Prediction-wise, this is one we got “wrong” (in a sense) but right in another sense. In our annual Term preview, we predicted:

In Union Pacific, I think the Court will probably reverse although this is the most difficult case to forecast and the Court may affirm on the first issue (allowing due process review in concept) but otherwise vacate and remand. Due process does not usually require “Cadillac” due process. Consequently, even if some level of due process review is permissible, it is not clear that any violation occurred.

The Court’s opinion essentially validated this analysis. However, by resolving the case on alternate statutory grounds, the Court left the current Circuit split unresolved. The Court also skirted the due process issue.