OCTOBER TERM, 1993
Syllabus
LIVADAS
v. BRADSHAW, CALIFORNIA LABOR COMMISSIONER
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH
CIRCUIT
No. 92-1920. Argued April 26, 1994-Decided June 13, 1994
California law requires employers to pay all wages due
immediately upon an employee's discharge, Labor Code § 201; imposes
a penalty for refusal to pay promptly, § 203; and places
responsibility for enforcing these provisions on the Commissioner
of Labor. After petitioner Livadas's employer refused to pay her
the wages owed upon her discharge, but paid them a few days later,
she filed a penalty claim. The Commissioner replied with a form
letter construing Labor Code § 229 as barring him from enforcing
such claims on behalf of individuals like Livadas, whose employment
terms and conditions are governed by a collectivebargaining
agreement containing an arbitration clause. Livadas brought this
action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, alleging that the nonenforcement
policy was pre-empted by federal law because it abridged her rights
under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The District Court
granted her summary judgment, rejecting the Commissioner's defense
that the claim was pre-empted by § 301 of the LaborManagement
Relations Act, 1947 (LMRA). Although acknowledging that the NLRA
gives Livadas a right to bargain collectively and that § 1983 would
supply a remedy for official deprivation of that right, the Court
of Appeals reversed, concluding that no federal right had been
infringed because Livadas's case reduced to an assertion that the
Commissioner had misinterpreted state law, namely § 229.
Held:
1. The Commissioner's policy is pre-empted by federal law.
Pp. 116-132.
(a) This case is fundamentally no different from
Nash v.
Florida Industrial Comm'n, 389 U. S. 235, 239, in
which the Court held that a state rule predicating benefits on
refraining from conduct protected by federal labor law was
pre-empted because it interfered with congressional purpose. The
Commissioner's policy, which requires Livadas to choose between
Labor Code and NLRA rights, cannot be reconciled with a federal
statutory scheme premised on the centrality of collective
bargaining and the desirability of arbitration. Pp. 116-118.
(b) The Commissioner's answers to the foregoing conclusion flow
from two significant misunderstandings of law. First, the assertion
that the nonenforcement policy must be valid because § 229 is
consistent
108
Syllabus
with federal law is premised on irrelevant relationships and
leads to the wrong question: Pre-emption analysis turns on the
policy's actual content and its real effect on federal rights, not
on whether § 229 is valid under the Federal Constitution or whether
the policy is, as a matter of state law, a proper interpretation of
§ 229. Second, the argument that a "rational basis" supports the
distinction the policy draws between employees represented by
unions and those who are not mistakes a validity standard under the
Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses for what the Supremacy
Clause requires: a determination whether the state rule conflicts
with the federal law. Pp. 118-121.
(c) This Court's decisions according pre-emptive effect to LMRA
§ 301 foreclose even a colorable argument that a claim under Labor
Code § 203 was pre-empted here, since they establish that the
section does not broadly pre-empt nonnegotiable employee rights
conferred by state law; that it is a claim's legal character, as
independent of rights under the collective-bargaining agreement,
that decides whether a state cause of action may go forward; and
that when liability is governed by independent state law and the
meaning of contract terms is not in dispute, the bare fact that a
collective-bargaining agreement is consulted for damage computation
is no reason to extinguish the state-law claim. See,
e. g.,
Allis-Chalmers Corp. v.
Lueck, 471 U. S. 202, and
Lingle v.
Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U. S. 399. Here, the
primary text for deciding whether Livadas was entitled to a penalty
was not the collective-bargaining agreement, but a calendar. The
only issue raised by her claim, whether her employer willfully
failed to pay her wages promptly upon severance, was a question of
state law entirely independent of the agreement. Absent any
indication that there was a dispute over the penalty amount, the
simple need to refer to bargained-for wage rates in computing the
penalty is irrelevant. Pp. 121-125.
(d) The Commissioner's attempt before this Court to recast the
nonenforcement policy as expressing a "conscious decision" to keep
the State's "hands off" the claims of employees protected by
collectivebargaining agreements, either because the Commissioner's
efforts and resources are more urgently needed by others or because
official restraint will actually encourage the
collective-bargaining and arbitral processes favored by federal
law, is rejected. If the policy were in fact animated by the first
of these late-blooming rationales, the Commissioner's emphasis on
the need to avoid "interpret[ing]" or "apply[ing]"
collective-bargaining agreements would be entirely misplaced. Nor
is the second asserted rationale convincing, since enforcement
under the policy does not turn on the bargain struck by the
contracting parties or on whether the contractual wage rate is even
arbitrable, but simply on the fact that the parties have consented
to arbitration. The suggestion that the policy is meant to
stimulate freewheeling bargaining over
109
wage payments to discharged workers contradicts Labor Code §
219, which expressly and categorically prohibits the modification
of rules under the Code by "private agreement." Even at face value,
however, the "hands off" label poses special dangers that
advantages conferred by federal law will be canceled out and its
objectives undermined, and those dangers are not laid to rest by
professions of the need for governmental neutrality in labor
disputes. Similarly, the vague assertions that the policy advances
federal interests are not persuasive, since this Court has never
suggested that the federal bias toward bargaining is to be served
by forcing employees and employers to bargain for what they would
otherwise be entitled to under state law.
Fort Halifax Packing
Co. v.
Coyne, 482 U. S. 1, and the
federal and state "opt-out" laws cited by the Commissioner,
distinguished. Pp. 126-132.
2. Livadas is entitled to seek relief under § 1983 for the
Commissioner's abridgment of her NLRA right to complete the
collectivebargaining process and agree to an arbitration clause.
That right is at least immanent in the NLRA's structure, if it is
not provided in so many words by the statutory text, and the
obligation to respect it on the part of those acting under color of
law is not vague or amorphous. Moreover, Congress has given no
indication of any intent to foreclose actions like Livadas's, and
there is no cause for special caution here. See
Golden State
Transit Corp. v.
Los Angeles, 493 U. S. 103, 108-112.
Pp. 132-135.
987 F.2d
552, reversed.
SOUTER, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
Richard G.
McCracken argued the cause for
petitioner.
With him on the briefs was
Michael T. Anderson.
Malcolm L. Stewart argued the cause for the United States as
amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor
General Days, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, Amy L. Wax, Linda
Sher, and Norton J. Come.
R.
Thomas Cadell, Jr., argued the cause and filed a brief
for respondent. *
*Briefs of
amici curiae urging reversal were filed for
the Allied Educational Foundation by
Bertram R. Gelfand and
Jeffrey C.
Dannenberg; and for the American
Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations by
Mark Schneider, Marsha S.
Berzon, Laurence Gold, and
Walter Kamiat.
Briefs of
amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for
the Chamber of Commerce of the United States et al. by
Marshall
B. Babson, Stanley
110
JUSTICE SOUTER delivered the opinion of the Court. California
law requires employers to pay all wages due immediately upon an
employee's discharge, imposes a penalty for refusal to pay
promptly, precludes any private contractual waiver of these minimum
labor standards, and places responsibility for enforcing these
provisions on the State Commissioner of Labor (Commissioner or
Labor Commissioner), ostensibly for the benefit of all employees.
Respondent, the Labor Commissioner,l has construed a further
provision of state law as barring enforcement of these wage and
penalty claims on behalf of individuals like petitioner, whose
terms and conditions of employment are governed by a
collective-bargaining agreement containing an arbitration clause.
We hold that federal law pre-empts this policy, as abridging the
exercise of such employees' rights under the National Labor
Relations Act (NLRA or Act), 29 U. S. C. § 151
et seq., and
that redress for this unlawful refusal to enforce may be had under
42 U. S. C. § 1983.
I
Until her discharge on January 2, 1990, petitioner Karen Livadas
worked as a grocery clerk in a Vallejo, California, Safeway
supermarket. The terms and conditions of her employment were
subject to a collective-bargaining agreement between Safeway and
Livadas's union, Local 373 of the United Food and Commercial
Workers, AFL-CIO. Unexceptionally, the agreement provided that
"[d]isputes as to the interpretation or application of the
agreement," including grievances arising from allegedly unjust
discharge or suspension, would be subject to binding arbitration.
See Food
R. Strauss, Stephen A. Bokat, Mona C.
Zeiberg, Jan
Amundson, and
Quentin Riegel; and for the Employers
Group et al. by
Steven G.
Drapkin. 1 Respondent
Bradshaw has succeeded Lloyd Aubry, the original named defendant in
this action, as Labor Commissioner and has been substituted as a
party before this Court. See this Court's Rule 35.3.
111
Store Contract, United Food & Commercial Workers Union,
Local 373, AFL-CIO, Solano and Napa Counties §§ 18.2, 18.3 (Mar. 1,
1989-Feb. 29, 1992) (Food Store Contract).2 When notified of her
discharge, Livadas demanded immediate payment of wages owed her, as
guaranteed to all California workers by state law, see Cal. Lab.
Code Ann. § 201 (West 1989),3 but her store manager refused,
referring to the company practice of making such payments by check
mailed from a central corporate payroll office. On January 5, 1990,
Livadas received a check from Safeway, in the full amount owed for
her work through January 2.
On January 9, 1990, Livadas filed a claim against Safeway with
the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE or
Division), asserting that under § 203 of the Labor Code the company
was liable to her for a sum equal to three days' wages, as a
penalty for the delay between discharge and the date when payment
was in fact re-
2 Section 18.1 of the collective-bargaining agreement defines a
"grievance" as a "dispute ... involving or arising out of the
meaning, interpretation, application or alleged violation" of the
agreement.
Section 18.8 provides that "[i]n the case of a direct wage claim
... which does not involve an interpretation of any of the
provisions of this Agreement, either party may submit such claim
for settlement to either the grievance procedure provided for
herein or to any other tribunal or agency which is authorized and
empowered to effect such a settlement."
3 California Labor Code § 201 provides in pertinent part: "If an
employer discharges an employee, the wages earned and unpaid at the
time of discharge are due and payable immediately." It draws no
distinction between union-represented employees and others.
Under another provision of California law, Labor Code § 219, the
protections of § 201 (and of other rules governing the frequency
and form of wage payments) "can [not] in any way be contravened or
set aside by private agreement, whether written, oral, or implied,"
although employers are free to pay wages more frequently, in
greater amounts, or at an earlier date than ordained by these state
rules; cf. § 204.2 (executive, administrative, and professional
employees may negotiate through collective bargaining for pay
periods different from those required by state law).
112
ceived.4 Livadas requested the Commissioner to enforce the
claim.5
By an apparently standard form letter dated February 7, 1990,
the Division notified Livadas that it would take no action on her
complaint:
"It is our understanding that the employees working for Safeway
are covered by a collective bargaining agreement which contains an
arbitration clause. The provisions of Labor Code Section 229
preclude this Division from adjudicating any dispute concerning the
interpretation or application of any collective bargaining
agreement containing an arbitration clause.
"Labor Code Section 203 requires that the wages continue at the
'same rate' until paid. In order to establish what the 'same rate'
was, it is necessary to look to the
4 That section provides that when an employer "willfully fails"
to comply with the strictures of § 201 and fails to pay "any wages"
owed discharged employees, "the wages of such employees shall
continue as a penalty from the due date thereof at the same rate
until paid or until an action therefor is commenced; but such wages
shall not continue for more than 30 days." Cal. Lab. Code Ann. §
203 (West 1989).
In her DLSE claim form, Livadas made plain that she did not
dispute Safeway's calculation of the wages owed, but sought only
the penalty for the employer's late tender. App. 18.
5 Under state law, the Commissioner of Labor is the Division
Chief of the DLSE, see Cal. Lab. Code Ann. §§ 79, 82(b) (West
1989), and is authorized either directly to prosecute a wage or
penalty claim on an employee's behalf in state court, § 98.3(a),
or, in the alternative, to initiate informal hearings under DLSE
auspices, see § 98(a), in which full relief may be awarded, § 98.1.
The Commissioner's policy with respect to claims by employees
covered by collective-bargaining agreements appears not to
distinguish between these two modes of proceeding, and,
accordingly, we will refer, as the parties largely do, to her
policy as a categorical refusal to "enforce" such claims. Although
Labor Code § 218 states that "[n]othing in this article shall limit
the right of any wage claimant to sue ... for any wages or penalty
due him," another provision, § 218.5, authorizes attorney's fee
awards to prevailing parties in wage and penalty disputes, making
individual litigation a somewhat risky prospect, and DLSE
enforcement remains in any event the more realistic avenue for
modest claims.
113
collective bargaining agreement and 'apply' that agreement. The
courts have pointed out that such an application is exactly what
the provisions of Labor Code § 229 prohibit." 6 App. 16.
The letter made no reference to any particular aspect of
Livadas's claim making it unfit for enforcement, and the
Commissioner's position is fairly taken to be that DLSE enforcement
of § 203 claims, as well as other claims for which relief is pegged
to an employee's wage rate, is generally unavailable to employees
covered by collective-bargaining agreements.7
Livadas brought this action in the United States District Court
under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, alleging that the
nonenforcement policy, reflecting the Commissioner's reading of
Labor Code § 229, was pre-empted as conflicting with Livadas's
rights under § 7 of the NLRA, 49 Stat. 452, as amended, 29 U. S. C.
§ 157, because the policy placed a
6 Labor Code § 229 provides: "Actions to enforce the provisions
of this article [Labor Code §§ 200-243] for the collection of due
and unpaid wages claimed by an individual may be maintained without
regard to the existence of any private agreement to arbitrate. This
section shall not apply to claims involving any dispute concerning
the interpretation or application of any collective bargaining
agreement containing such an arbitration agreement." Cf.
Perry v.
Thomas, 482 U. S. 483 (1987) (§
229 bar to waiver defeated by Federal Arbitration Act policy).
All concerned identify the allusion to what "courts" have said
to be a reference to a 1975 decision of the California Court of
Appeal,
Plumbing, Heating and Piping Employers Council v.
Howard, 53 Cal. App. 3d 828, 126 Cal. Rptr. 406, where the
Commissioner was held barred by the statute from enforcing an
"unpaid" wage claim arising from an employee's assertion that he
was entitled, under collective-bargaining agreements then in force,
to receive a foreman's rate of pay and not a journeyman's.
7The Commissioner notes that a small minority of
collective-bargaining agreements lack provisions either setting
wage rates or mandating arbitration (and therefore might
potentially be enforced under the challenged policy). But see n.
13,
infra; Lingle v.
Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc.,
486 U. S. 399,
411, n. 11 (1988) (noting that 99% of sampled collectivebargaining
agreements include arbitration clauses).
114
penalty on the exercise of her statutory right to bargain
collectively with her employer. She stressed that there was no
dispute about the amount owed and that neither she nor Safeway had
begun any grievance proceeding over the penalty.8 Livadas sought a
declaration that the Commissioner's interpretation of § 229 was
pre-empted, an injunction against adherence to the allegedly
impermissible policy, and an order requiring the Commissioner
either to process her penalty claim or (if it would be time barred
under state law) pay her damages in the amount the Commissioner
would have obtained if the Commissioner had moved against the
employer in time.
The District Court granted summary judgment for Livadas, holding
the labor pre-emption claim cognizable under § 1983, see
Golden
State Transit Corp. v.
Los Angeles, 493 U. S. 103 (1989)
(Golden State II), and the Commissioner's policy pre-empted
as interfering with her § 7 right, see,
e. g.,
Golden
State Transit Corp. v.
Los Angeles, 475 U. S. 608 (1986)
(Golden State I), by denying her the benefit of a minimum
labor standard, namely, the right to timely payment of final wages
secured by Labor Code §§201 and 203. 749 F. Supp. 1526 (ND Cal.
1990). The District Court treated as irrelevant the Commissioner's
assertion that the policy was consistent with state law (e. g.,
Labor Code § 229) and rejected the defense that it was required by
federal law, namely, §301 of the Labor-Management Relations Act,
1947 (LMRA), 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. § 185(a), which has been
read to pre-empt state-court resolution of disputes turning on the
rights of parties under collective-bargaining agree-
8 Livadas did file a grievance claiming that the discharge had
been improper under the collective-bargaining agreement, ultimately
obtaining reinstatement with backpay. While the parties dispute
what effect, as a matter of state law, that recovery would have on
Livadas's right under § 203, neither the pertinent California
statutes nor the Commissioner's policy at issue here depend on
whether a claimant's termination was for just cause.
115
ments. The District Court explained that resolution of the claim
under § 203 "requires reference only to a calendar, not to the
[collective-bargaining agreement]," 749 F. Supp., at 1536, and
granted petitioner all requested relief.
Id., at 1540.9
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
reversed.
987 F.2d
552 (1993). The court acknowledged that federal law gives
Livadas a right to engage in collective bargaining and that § 1983
would supply a remedy for official deprivation of that right, but
the panel majority concluded that no federal right had been
infringed. The court reasoned that the policy was based on the
Commissioner's reading of Labor Code § 229, whose function of
keeping state tribunals from adjudicating claims in a way that
would interfere with the operation of federal labor policy is, by
definition, consistent with the dictates of federal law. Noting
that Livadas did not assert pre-emption of § 229 itself or object
to the California courts' interpretation of it, the majority
concluded that her case reduced to an assertion that the
Commissioner had misinterpreted state law, an error for which
relief could be obtained in California courts.
Livadas could not claim to be "penalized," the Appeals panel
then observed, for she stood "in the same position as every other
employee in the state when it comes to seeking the Commissioner's
enforcement. Every employee ... is subject to an eligibility
determination, and every employee ... is subject to the risk that
the Commissioner will get it wrong." 987 F. 2d, at 559. The Ninth
Circuit majority concluded by invoking the "general policies of
federal labor law" strongly favoring the arbitration of disputes
and reasoning that, "Congress would not want state officials
erring
9 In the Court of Appeals, Livadas acknowledged that the portion
of the District Court's order awarding monetary relief against the
Commissioner in her official capacity was likely barred by the
Eleventh Amendment, see Brief for Petitioner 43, n. 20. This and
other issues arising from the scope of the remedy are better left
for the courts below on remand.
116
on the side of adjudicating state law disputes whenever it is a
close call as to whether a claim is preempted."
Id., at
560.10 We granted certiorari, 510 U. S. 1083 (1994), to address the
important questions of federal labor law implicated by the
Commissioner's policy, and we now reverse.
II A
A state rule predicating benefits on refraining from conduct
protected by federal labor law poses special dangers of
interference with congressional purpose. In
Nash v.
Florida Industrial Comm'n, 389 U. S. 235 (1967), a
unanimous Court held that a state policy of withholding
unemployment benefits solely because an employee had filed an
unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations
Board had a "direct tendency to frustrate the purpose of Congress"
and, if not pre-empted, would "defeat or handicap a valid national
objective by ... withdraw[ing] state benefits ... simply because"
an employee engages in conduct protected
10 In dissent, Judge Kozinski countered that by focusing on
whether Livadas was entitled to a correct application of state law,
the majority had explored the wrong question. The proper enquiry,
the dissent maintained, was not whether the Commissioner has
discretion under state law not to enforce wage and penalty claims
(which she plainly does) or whether she need enforce claims if
doing so would actually be pre-empted by federal law (she plainly
need not), but whether she may draw the line for enforcement
purposes between individuals covered by collectivebargaining
agreements containing arbitration clauses (whose claims will
sometimes but not always be pre-empted under § 301) and those not
so covered. Underscoring that Livadas's claim would not, in fact,
have been pre-empted had the federal rule been given its proper
scope, the dissent found wanting the majority's "quasi-pre-emption"
rationale, 987 F. 2d, at 562. Judge Kozinski concluded that the
Commissioner's policy, based on an "honest (though flagrant)
mistake of law," id., at 563, could not be squared with the
requirements of federal labor law, because the burdened class was
defined by the exercise of federal rights and because the burden on
collective-bargaining rights, justified only by a mistaken
understanding of what § 301 requires, served no "legitimate state
purpose" at all.
Ibid.
117
and encouraged by the NLRA.
Id., at 239; see also
Golden State I, supra, at 618 (city may not condition
franchise renewal on settlement of labor dispute). This case is
fundamentally no different from
NashY Just as the respondent
state commission in that case offered an employee the choice of
pursuing her unfair labor practice claim or receiving unemployment
compensation, the Commissioner has presented Livadas and others
like her with the choice of having statelaw rights under §§ 201 and
203 enforced or exercising the right to enter into a
collective-bargaining agreement with an arbitration clause. This
unappetizing choice, we conclude, was not intended by Congress, see
infra, at 130, and cannot ultimately be reconciled with a
statutory scheme premised on the centrality of the right to bargain
collectively and the desirability of resolving contract disputes
through arbitra-
11 While the NLRA does not expressly recognize a right to be
covered by a collective-bargaining agreement, in that no duty is
imposed on an employer actually to reach agreement with represented
employees, see 29 U. S. C. § 158(d), a State's penalty on those who
complete the collectivebargaining process works an interference
with the operation of the Act, much as does a penalty on those who
participate in the process. Cf.
Hill v.
Florida ex rel.
Watson, 325 U. S.
538 (1945) (State may not enforce licensing requirement on
collective-bargaining agents).
We understand the difference between the position of petitioner
(who would place this case within our
"Machinists" line of
labor pre-emption cases, see
Machinists v.
Wisconsin
Employment Relations Comm'n, 427 U. S. 132 (1976)) and that of
her
amicus, the Solicitor General (who describes it as a
case of "conflict" pre-emption, see Brief for United States as
Amicus Curiae 14-15, and n. 4) to be entirely semantic,
depending on whether Livadas's right is characterized as implicit
in the structure of the Act (as was the right to self-help upheld
in
Machinists) or as rooted in the text of § 7. See
generally
Golden State II, 493 U. S. 103, 110-112
(1989) (emphasizing fundamental similarity between enumerated NLRA
rights and
"Machinists" rights). Neither party here argues
for application of the rule of
San Diego Building Trades
Council v.
Garmon, 359 U. S. 236 (1959),
which safeguards the primary jurisdiction of the National Labor
Relations Board to pass judgment on certain conduct, such as labor
picketing, which might be held protected by § 7 of the Act but
which might also be prohibited by § 8 of the Act.
118
tion. Cf.
Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v.
Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724, 755 (1985)
(state law held not pre-empted because it "neither encourage[s] nor
discourage[s] the collectivebargaining processes") .12
B 1
The Commissioner's answers to this pre-emption conclusion flow
from two significant misunderstandings of law. First, the
Commissioner conflates the policy that Livadas challenges with the
state law on which it purports to rest, Labor Code § 229, assuming
that if the statutory provision is consistent with federal law, her
policy must be also. But
12 Despite certain similarities, the question whether federal
labor law permits a State to grant or withhold unemployment
insurance benefits from striking workers requires consideration of
the policies underlying a distinct federal statute, Title IX of the
Social Security Act, see 26 U. S. C. § 3301 (1988 ed. and Supp.
IV); 42 u. S. C. § 501
et seq.; 42 U. S. C. § 1101
et
seq. Thus, straightforward NLRA pre-emption analysis has been
held inappropriate. See
New York Telephone Co. v.
New
York State Dept. of Labor, 440 U. S. 519, 536-540
(1979) (plurality opinion); see also
id., at 549 (BLACKMUN,
J., concurring in judgment).
Noting that
Nash v.
Florida Industrial Comm'n,
389 U. S. 235
(1967), held state action pre-empted that was "like the coercive
actions which employers and unions are forbidden to engage in," see
id., at 239, it is argued here, see Brief for Employers Group as
Amicus Curiae 7-12, that the NLRA prohibits only state
action closely analogous to conduct that would support an unfair
labor practice charge if engaged in by a private employer. Our
cases, however, teach that parallelism is not dispositive and that
the Act sometimes demands a more scrupulous evenhandedness from the
States. See generally
Wisconsin Dept. of Industry v.
Gould, Inc., 475 U. S. 282, 290 (1986)
(State may not debar employers with multiple NLRA violations from
government contracting); compare
Golden State I, 475 U. S. 608 (1986),
with
NLRB v.
Servette, Inc., 377 U. S. 46, 49-54 (1964)
(private actor may refuse to deal with employer based on impending
strike); but cf.
Building &
Constr. Trades
Council v.
Associated Builders &
Contractors of
Mass. fR. I., Inc., 507 U. S. 218, 227228
(1993) (the Act does not always preclude a State, functioning as an
employer or a purchaser of labor services, from behaving as a
private employer would be entitled to do).
119
on this logic, a policy of issuing general search warrants would
be justified if it were adopted to implement a state statute
codifying word-for-word the "good-faith" exception to the valid
warrant requirement recognized in
United States v.
Leon, 468 U.
S. 897 (1984). The relationship between policy and state
statute and between the statute and federal law is, in any event,
irrelevant. The question presented by this case is not whether
Labor Code § 229 is valid under the Federal Constitution or whether
the Commissioner's policy is, as a matter of state law, a proper
interpretation of § 229. Pre-emption analysis, rather, turns on the
actual content of respondent's policy and its real effect on
federal rights. See
Nash v.
Florida Industrial Comm'n,
389 U. S. 235 (1967) (holding pre-empted an administrative
policy interpreting presumably valid state unemployment insurance
law exception for "labor disputes" to include proceedings under
NLRB complaints); see also 987 F. 2d, at 561 (Kozinski, J.,
dissenting).13
Having sought to lead us to the wrong question, the Commissioner
proposes the wrong approach for answering it, defending the
distinction drawn in the challenged statutory interpretation,
between employees represented by unions and those who are not, as
supported by a "rational basis," see,
13 See also
Rum Creek Coal Sales, Inc. v.
Caperton, 971 F.2d
1148, 1154 (CA4 1992) (State may not, consistently with the
NLRA, withhold protections of state antitrespass law from employer
involved in labor dispute, in an effort to apply a facially valid
"neutrality statute"). Thus, while the "misinterpretation of a
perfectly valid state statute ... does not [in itself] provide
grounds for federal relief," 987 F. 2d, at 559, it does not follow
that no federal relief may be had when such misinterpretation
results in conflict with federal law. Nor does the opportunity to
seek redress in a nonfederal forum determine the existence of a
federal right, see
ibid. See,
e. g., Monroe v.
Pape, 365 U.
S. 167, 183 (1961). Of course, the extent to which a course of
conduct has deviated from "clearly established" federal law remains
crucial to deciding whether an official will be entitled to
immunity from individual damage liability, see,
e. g., Davis
v.
Scherer, 468 U. S. 183, 197
(1984).
120
e. g., Brief for Respondent 17. But such reasoning
mistakes a standard for validity under the Equal Protection and Due
Process Clauses for what the Supremacy Clause requires. The power
to tax is no less the power to destroy,
McCulloch v.
Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316 (1819), merely because a state
legislature has an undoubtedly rational and "legitimate" interest
in raising revenue. In labor pre-emption cases, as in others under
the Supremacy Clause, our office is not to pass judgment on the
reasonableness of state policy, see,
e. g.,
Golden State
I, 475 U. S.
608 (1986) (city's desire to remain "neutral" in labor dispute
does not determine pre-emption). It is instead to decide if a state
rule conflicts with or otherwise "stands as an obstacle to the
accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives"
of the federal law.
Brown v.
Hotel Employees,
468 U. S. 491,
501 (1984) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).14
That is not to say, of course, that the several rationales for
the policy urged on the Court by the Commissioner and
amici
are beside the point here. If, most obviously, the Commissioner's
policy were actually compelled by federal law, as she argues it is,
we could hardly say that it was, simultaneously, pre-empted; at the
least, our task would then be one of harmonizing statutory law. But
we entertain this and other justifications claimed, not because
constitutional analysis under the Supremacy Clause is an open-ended
balancing act, simply weighing the federal interest against the
intensity of local feeling, see id., at 503, but because claims of
justification can sometimes help us to discern congressional
purpose, the "ultimate touchstone" of our enquiry.
Malone
14 Similarly, because our analysis here turns not on the
"rationality" of the governmental classification, but rather on its
effect on federal objectives, the Commissioner's policy is not
saved merely because it happens, at the margins, to be "under-" and
"over-inclusive," i.
e., burdening certain employees who are
not protected by the NLRA and allowing employees covered by highly
unusual collective-bargaining agreements the benefit of enforcement
of §§ 201 and 203 claims.
121
v.
White Motor Corp., 435 U. S. 497, 504 (1978)
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also
New
York Telephone Co. v.
New York State Dept. of Labor,
440 U. S. 519,
533 (1979) (plurality opinion).
2
We begin with the most complete of the defenses mounted by the
Commissioner, one that seems (or seemed until recently, at least)
to be at the heart of her position: that the challenged policy, far
from being pre-empted by federal law, is positively compelled by
it, and that even if the Commissioner had been so inclined, the
LMRA § 301 would have precluded enforcement of Livadas's penalty
claim. The nonenforcement policy, she suggests, is a necessary
emanation from this Court's § 301 pre-emption jurisprudence, marked
as it has been by repeated admonitions that courts should steer
clear of collective-bargaining disputes between parties who have
provided for arbitration. See,
e. g., AllisChalmers Corp. v.
Lueck, 471 U.
S. 202 (1985). Because, this argument runs (and Livadas was
told in the DLSE no-action letter), disposition of a
union-represented employee's penalty claim entails the
"interpretation or application" of a collective-bargaining
agreement (since determining the amount owed turns on the
contractual rate of pay agreed) resort to a state tribunal would
lead it into territory that Congress, in enacting § 301, meant to
be covered exclusively by arbitrators.
This reasoning, however, mistakes both the functions § 301
serves in our national labor law and our prior decisions according
that provision pre-emptive effect. To be sure, we have read the
text of § 30115 not only to grant federal courts jurisdiction over
claims asserting breach of collective-
15 Section 301 states that "[sJuits for violation of contracts
between an employer and a labor organization representing employees
... may be brought in any district court of the United States
having jurisdiction of the parties .... " 29 U. S. C. § 185(a).
122
bargaining agreements but also to authorize the development of
federal common-law rules of decision, in large part to assure that
agreements to arbitrate grievances would be enforced, regardless of
the vagaries of state law and lingering hostility toward
extrajudicial dispute resolution, see
Textile Workers v.
Lincoln Mills of Ala., 353 U. S. 448, 455-456
(1957); see also
Steelworkers v.
Warrior &
Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U. S. 574 (1960);
Avco Corp. v.
Machinists, 390 U. S. 557, 559 (1968)
("§ 301 ... was fashioned by Congress to place sanctions behind
agreements to arbitrate grievance disputes"). And in
Teamsters v.
Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S. 95 (1962), we
recognized an important corollary to the
Lincoln Mills rule:
while § 301 does not preclude state courts from taking jurisdiction
over cases arising from disputes over the interpretation of
collective-bargaining agreements, state contract law must yield to
the developing federal common law, lest common terms in bargaining
agreements be given different and potentially inconsistent
interpretations in different jurisdictions. See 369 U. S., at
103-104.16
And while this sensible "acorn" of § 301 pre-emption recognized
in
Lucas Flour has sprouted modestly in more recent
decisions of this Court, see,
e. g., Lueck, supra, at 210
("[I]f the policies that animate § 301 are to be given their proper
range ... the pre-emptive effect of § 301 must extend beyond suits
alleging contract violations"), it has not yet become, nor may it,
a sufficiently "mighty oak," see
Golden State I, 475 U. S.,
at 622 (REHNQUIST, J., dissenting), to supply the cover the
Commissioner seeks here. To the contrary, the pre-emption rule has
been applied only to assure that the
16 Within its proper sphere, §301 has been accorded unusual
pre-emptive power. In
Avco Corp. v.
Machinists,
390 U. S. 557
(1968), for example, we recognized that an action for breach of a
collective-bargaining agreement "ar[ose] under" § 301 (and
therefore was subject to federal removal, see 28 U. S. C. § 1441
(1988 ed. and Supp. IV)), despite the fact that the petitioner's
complaint did not mention the federal provision and appeared to
plead an adequate claim for relief under state contract law.
123
purposes animating § 301 will be frustrated neither by state
laws purporting to determine "questions relating to what the
parties to a labor agreement agreed, and what legal consequences
were intended to flow from breaches of that agreement,"
Lueck, 471 U. S., at 211, nor by parties' efforts to renege
on their arbitration promises by "relabeling" as tort suits actions
simply alleging breaches of duties assumed in collective-bargaining
agreements,
id., at 219; see
Republic Steel Corp. v.
Maddox, 379 U.
S. 650, 652 (1965) ("[F]ederal labor policy requires that
individual employees wishing to assert contract grievances must
attempt use of the contract grievance procedure agreed upon by
employer and union as the mode of redress") (emphasis deleted).
In
Lueck and in
Lingle v.
Norge Div. of Magic
Chef, Inc., 486
U. S. 399 (1988), we underscored the point that § 301 cannot be
read broadly to pre-empt nonnegotiable rights conferred on
individual employees as a matter of state law,17 and we stressed
that it is the legal character of a claim, as "independent" of
rights under the collective-bargaining agreement,
Lueck,
supra, at 213 (and not whether a grievance arising from
"precisely the same set of facts" could be pursued,
Lingle,
supra, at 410) that decides whether a state
17 That is so, we explained, both because Congress is understood
to have legislated against a backdrop of generally applicable labor
standards, see,
e. g., Lingle, 486 U. S., at 411-412, and
because the scope of the arbitral promise is not itself unlimited,
see
Steelworkers v.
Warrior &
Gulf Nav.
Co.,
363 U. S.
574, 582 (1960) ("[A]rbitration is a matter of contract and a
party cannot be required to submit to arbitration any dispute which
he has not agreed so to submit"). And while contract-interpretation
disputes must be resolved in the bargained-for arbitral realm, see
Republic Steel Corp. v.
Maddox, 379 U. S. 650 (1965), §
301 does not disable state courts from interpreting the terms of
collective-bargaining agreements in resolving non-pre-empted
claims, see
Charles Dowd Box Co. v.
Courtney,
368 U. S. 502
(1962) (state courts have jurisdiction over § 301 suits but must
apply federal common law);
NLRB v. C & C
Plywood
Corp., 385 U. S.
421 (1967).
124
cause of action may go forward.18 Finally, we were clear that
when the meaning of contract terms is not the subject of dispute,
the bare fact that a collective-bargaining agreement will be
consulted in the course of state-law litigation plainly does not
require the claim to be extinguished, see
Lingle, supra, at
413, n. 12 ("A collective-bargaining agreement may, of course,
contain information such as rate of pay ... that might be helpful
in determining the damages to which a worker prevailing in a
state-law suit is entitled").
These principles foreclose even a colorable argument that a
claim under Labor Code § 203 was pre-empted here. As the District
Court aptly observed, the primary text for deciding whether Livadas
was entitled to a penalty was not the Food Store Contract, but a
calendar. The only issue raised by Livadas's claim, whether Safeway
"willfully fail[ed] to pay" her wages promptly upon severance, Cal.
Lab. Code
18We are aware, as an
amicus brief makes clear, see Brief
for AFL-CIO as
Amicus Curiae, that the Courts of Appeals
have not been entirely uniform in their understanding and
application of the principles set down in
Lingle and
Lueck. But this case, in which non-pre-emption under § 301
is clear beyond peradventure, see
infra this page and 125,
is not a fit occasion for us to resolve disagreements that have
arisen over the proper scope of our earlier decisions. We do note
in this regard that while our cases tend to speak broadly in terms
of § 301 "pre-emption," defendants invoke that provision in diverse
situations and for different reasons: sometimes their assertion is
that a plaintiff's cause of action itself derives from the
collective-bargaining agreement (and, by that agreement, belongs
before an arbitrator); in other instances, the argument is
different, that a plaintiff's claim cannot be "resolved" absent
collective-bargaining agreement interpretation, i.
e., that
a term of the agreement mayor does confer a defense on the employer
(perhaps because the employee or his union has negotiated away the
state-law right), cf.
Caterpillar Inc. v.
Williams,
482 U. S. 386, 398-399 (1987); and in other cases still,
concededly "independent" state-law litigation may nonetheless
entail some collective-bargaining agreement application. Holding
the plaintiff's cause of action substantively extinguished may not,
as
amicus AFL-CIO observes, always be the only means of
vindicating the arbitrator's primacy as the bargained-for contract
interpreter. Cf.
Collyer Insulated Wire, Gulf &
Western Systems Co., 192 N. L. R. B. 837 (1971).
125
Ann. § 203 (West 1989), was a question of state law, entirely
independent of any understanding embodied in the
collective-bargaining agreement between the union and the employer.
There is no indication that there was a "dispute" in this case over
the amount of the penalty to which Livadas would be entitled, and
Lingle makes plain in so many words that when liability is
governed by independent state law, the mere need to "look to" the
collective-bargaining agreement for damages computation is no
reason to hold the state-law claim defeated by § 301. See 486 U.
S., at 413, n. 12.19
Beyond the simple need to refer to bargained-for wage rates in
computing the penalty, the collective-bargaining agreement is
irrelevant to the dispute (if any) between Livadas and Safeway.
There is no suggestion here that Livadas's union sought or
purported to bargain away her protections under § 201 or § 203, a
waiver that we have said would (especially in view of Labor Code §
219) have to be "'clear and unmistakable,'" see
Lingle,
supra, at 409-410, n. 9 (quoting
Metropolitan Edison Co.
v.
NLRB, 460
U. S. 693, 708 (1983)), for a court even to consider whether it
could be given effect, nor is there any indication that the parties
to the collective-bargaining agreement understood their arbitration
pledge to cover these state-law claims. See generally Gil
mer
v.
Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20, 35 (1991);
cf. Food Store Contract § 18.8. But even if such suggestions or
indications were to be found, the Commissioner could not invoke
them to defend her policy, which makes no effort to take such
factors into account before denying enforcement.2o
19 This is not to say, of course, that a § 203 penalty claim
could never be pre-empted by § 301.
20 In holding the challenged policy pre-empted, we note that
there is no equally obvious conflict between what § 301 requires
and the text of Labor Code § 229 (as against what respondent has
read it to mean). The California provision, which concerns whether
a promise to arbitrate a claim will be enforced to defeat a direct
action under the Labor Code, does not purport generally to deny
union-represented employees their rights under §§ 201 and 203.
Rather, it confines its preclusive focus only to "dispute[s]
126
C 1
Before this Court, however, the Commissioner does not confine
herself to the assertion that Livadas's claim would have been
pre-empted by LMRA § 301. Indeed, largely putting aside that
position, she has sought here to cast the policy in different
terms, as expressing a "conscious decision," see Brief for
Respondent 14, to keep the State's "hands off" the claims of
employees protected by collective-bargaining agreements, either
because the Division's efforts and resources are more urgently
needed by others or because official restraint will actually
encourage the collectivebargaining and arbitral processes favored
by federal law. The latter, more ambitious defense has been
vigorously taken up by the Commissioner's
amici, who warn
that invalidation of the disputed policy would sound the death
knell for other, more common governmental measures that take
account of collective-bargaining processes or treat workers
represented by unions differently from others in any respect.
Although there surely is no bar to our considering these
alternative explanations, cf.
Dandridge v.
Williams,
397 U. S. 471, 475, n. 6 (1970) (party may defend judgment on
basis not relied upon below), we note, as is often the case with
such late-blooming rationales, that the overlap between what the
Commissioner now claims to be state policy and what the state
legislature has enacted into law is awkwardly inexact. First, if
the Commissioner's policy (or California
concerning the interpretation or application of any
collective-bargaining agreement," in which event an "agreement to
arbitrate" such disputes is to be given effect. Nor does the
Howard decision, the apparent font of the Commissioner's
policy, appear untrue to § 301 teachings: there, an employee sought
to have an "unpaid wage" claim do the office of a claim that a
collective-bargaining agreement entitled him to a higher wage; that
sort of claim, however, derives its existence from the
collective-bargaining agreement and, accordingly, falls within any
customary understanding of arbitral jurisdiction. See 53 Cal. App.
3d, at 836, 126 Cal. Rptr., at 411.
127
law) were animated simply by the frugal desire to conserve the
State's money for the protection of employees not covered by
collective-bargaining agreements, the Commissioner's emphasis, in
the letter to Livadas and in this litigation, on the need to
"interpret" or "apply" terms of a collectivebargaining agreement
would be entirely misplaced.
Nor is the nonenforcement policy convincingly defended as giving
parties to a collective-bargaining agreement the "benefit of their
bargain," see Brief for Respondent 18, n. 13, by assuring them that
their promise to arbitrate is kept and not circumvented. Under the
Commissioner's policy, enforcement does not turn on what disputes
the parties agreed would be resolved by arbitration (the bargain
struck), see
Gilmer, 500 U. S., at 26, or on whether the
contractual wage rate is even subject to (arbitrable) dispute.
Rather, enforcement turns exclusively on the fact that the
contracting parties consented to any arbitration at all. Even if
the Commissioner could permissibly presume that state-law claims
are generally intended to be arbitrated, but cf. id., at 35
(employees in prior cases "had not agreed to arbitrate their
statutory claims, and the labor arbitrators were not authorized to
resolve such claims"),21 her policy goes still further. Even in
cases when it could be said with "positive assurance,"
21 In holding that an agreement to arbitrate an Age
Discrimination in Employment Act claim is enforceable under the
Federal Arbitration Act,
Gilmer emphasized its basic
consistency with our unanimous decision in
Alexander v.
Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U. S. 36 (1974),
permitting a discharged employee to bring a Title VII claim,
notwithstanding his having already grieved the dismissal under a
collective-bargaining agreement.
Gilmer distinguished
Gardner-Denver as relying,
inter alia, on: the
"distinctly separate nature of ... contractual and statutory
rights" (even when both were "violated as a result of the same
factual occurrence"), 415 U. S., at 50; the fact that a labor
"arbitrator has authority to resolve only questions of contractual
rights," id., at 53-54; and the concern that in
collective-bargaining arbitration, "the interests of the individual
employee may be subordinated to the collective interests of all
employees in the bargaining unit," id., at 58, n. 19.
128
Warrior &
Gulf, 363 U. S., at 582, that the
parties did not intend that state-law claims be subject to
arbitration, cf. Food Store Contract § 18.8 (direct wage claim not
involving interpretation of agreement may be submitted "to any
other tribunal or agency which is authorized and empowered" to
enforce it), the Commissioner would still deny enforcement, on the
stated basis that the collective-bargaining agreement nonetheless
contained "an arbitration clause" and because the claim would, on
her view, entail "interpretation," of the agreement's terms. Such
an irrebuttable presumption is not easily described as the benefit
of the parties' "bargain."
The Commissioner and
amici finally suggest that denying
enforcement to union-represented employees' claims under §§ 201 and
203 (and other Labor Code provisions) is meant to encourage parties
to bargain collectively for their own rules about the payment of
wages to discharged workers. But with this suggestion, the State's
position simply slips any tether to California law. If California's
goal really were to stimulate such freewheeling bargaining on these
subjects, the enactment of Labor Code § 219, expressly and
categorically prohibiting the modification of these Labor Code
rules by "private agreement," would be a very odd way to pursue
it.22 Cf. Cal. Lab. Code Ann. § 227.3 (West 1989) (allowing parties
to collective-bargaining agreement to arrive at different rule for
vacation pay). In short, the policy, the rationales, and the state
law are not coherent.
2
Even at face value, however, neither the "hands off" labels nor
the vague assertions that general labor law policies are thereby
advanced much support the Commissioner's defense here. The former
merely takes the position discussed and rejected earlier, that a
distinction between claimants represented by unions and those who
are not is "rational," the
22 The Commissioner avoids such complications simply by omitting
any reference to Labor Code § 219.
129
former being less "in need" than the latter. While we hardly
suggest here that every distinction between unionrepresented
employees and others is invalid under the NLRA, see
infra,
at 131-132, the assertion that represented employees are less "in
need" precisely because they have exercised federal rights poses
special dangers that advantages conferred by federal law will be
canceled out and its objectives undermined. Cf.
Metropolitan
Life, 471 U. S., at 756 ("It would turn the policy that
animated the Wagner Act on its head to understand it to have
penalized workers who have chosen to join a union by preventing
them from benefiting from state labor regulations imposing minimal
standards on nonunion employers"). Accordingly, as we observed in
Metropolitan Life, the widespread practice in Congress and
in state legislatures has assumed the contrary, bestowing basic
employment guarantees and protections on individual employees
without singling out members of labor unions (or those represented
by them) for disability; see id., at 755; 23 accord,
Lingle,
486 U. S., at 411-412.
Nor do professions of "neutrality" lay the dangers to rest.
The pre-empted action in
Golden State I could easily have
been redescribed as following a "hands-off" policy, in that the
city sought to avoid endorsing either side in the course of a labor
dispute, see 475 U. S., at 622 (REHNQUIST, J., dissenting) (city
did not seek "to place its weight on one side or the other of the
scales of economic warfare"), and the respondent commission in
Nash may have understood its policy as expressing neutrality
between the parties in a yet-to-be-
23We noted that "Congress [has never] seen fit to exclude
unionized workers and employers from laws establishing federal
minimum employment standards. We see no reason to believe that for
this purpose Congress intended state minimum labor standards to be
treated differently .... Minimum state labor standards affect union
and nonunion employees equally and neither encourage nor discourage
the collectivebargaining processes that are the subject of the
NLRA."
Metropolitan Life, 471 U. S., at 755.
130
decided unfair labor practice dispute. See also
Rum Creek
Coal Sales, Inc. v.
Caperton, 971
F.2d 1148, 1154 (CA4 1992) (NLRA forbids state policy, under
state law barring "aid or assistance" to either party to a labor
dispute, of not arresting picketers who violated state trespass
laws). Nor need we pause long over the assertion that
nonenforcement of valid state-law claims is consistent with federal
labor law by "encouraging" the operation of collective bargaining
and arbitration process. Denying represented employees basic safety
protections might "encourage" collective bargaining over that
subject, and denying union employers the protection of generally
applicable state trespass law might lead to increased bargaining
over the rights of labor pickets, cf.
Rum Creek, supra, but
we have never suggested that labor law's bias toward bargaining is
to be served by forcing employees or employers to bargain for what
they would otherwise be entitled to as a matter of course. See
generally
Metropolitan Life, supra, at 757 (Congress did not
intend to "remove the backdrop of state law ... and thereby
artificially create a no-law area") (emphasis deleted and internal
quotation marks omitted).24
The precedent cited by the Commissioner and
amici as
supporting the broadest "hands off" view,
Fort Halifax Packing
Co. v.
Coyne, 482 U. S. 1 (1987), is not
in point. In that case we held that there was no federal
pre-emption of a Maine statute that allowed employees and employers
to contract for plant-closing severance payments different from
those otherwise mandated by state law. That decision, however, does
not even purport to address the question supposedly presented here:
while there was mention of state lati-
24 Were it enough simply to point to a general labor policy
advanced by particular state action, the city in
Golden
State could have claimed to be encouraging the "friendly
adjustment of industrial disputes," 29 U. S. C. § 151, and the
State in
Gould, the entirely "laudable," 475 U. S., at 291,
purpose of "deter[ring] labor law violations and ... reward[ing]
'fidelity to the law,'" id., at 287.
131
tude to "balance the desirability of a particular substantive
labor standard against the right of self-determination regarding
the terms and conditions of employment," see id., at 22, the policy
challenged here differs in two crucial respects from the
"unexceptional exercise of the [State's] police power," ibid.
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted), defended in those
terms in our earlier case. Most fundamentally, the Maine law
treated all employees equally, whether or not represented by a
labor organization. All were entitled to the statutory severance
payment, and all were allowed to negotiate agreements providing for
different benefits. See id., at 4, n. 1. Second, the minimum
protections of Maine's plant-closing law were relinquished not by
the mere act of signing an employment contract (or
collective-bargaining agreement), but only by the parties' express
agreement on different terms, see id., at 21.25
While the Commissioner and her
amici call our attention
to a number of state and federal laws that draw distinctions
between union and nonunion represented employees, see,
e.
g., D. C. Code Ann. §36-103 (1993) ("Unless otherwise specified in
a collective agreement ... [w]henever an employer discharges an
employee, the employer shall pay the employee's wages earned not
later than the working day following such discharge"); 29 U. S. C.
§ 203(0) ("Hours [w]orked" for Fair Labor Standards Act measured
according to "express terms of ... or practice under bona fide
collective-bargaining agreement"), virtually all share the
important second feature observed in
Coyne, that
unionrepresented employees have the full protection of the minimum
standard, absent any agreement for something different. These "opt
out" statutes are thus manifestly different in their operation (and
their effect on federal rights)
25 It bears mention that the law in
Fort Halifax pegged
the benefit payment to an employee's wages, meaning that the State
Labor Commissioner would "look to" the collective-bargaining
agreement in enforcing claims in precisely the same manner that
respondent would here.
132
from the Commissioner's rule that an employee forfeits his
state-law rights the moment a collective-bargaining agreement with
an arbitration clause is entered into. But cf.
Metropolitan
Edison, 460 U. S., at 708. Hence, our holding that the
Commissioner's unusual policy is irreconcilable with the structure
and purposes of the Act should cast no shadow on the validity of
these familiar and narrowly drawn opt-out provisions.26
III
Having determined that the Commissioner's policy is in fact
pre-empted by federal law, we find strong support in our precedents
for the position taken by both courts below that Livadas is
entitled to seek relief under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 for the
Commissioner's abridgment of her NLRA rights. Section 1983 provides
a federal cause of action for the deprivation, under color of law,
of a citizen's "rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the
Constitution and laws" of the United States, and we have given that
provision the effect its terms require, as affording redress for
violations of federal statutes, as well as of constitutional norms.
Maine v.
Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1, 4 (1980). We
have, it is true, recognized that even the broad statutory text
does not authorize a suit for every alleged violation of federal
law. A particular statutory provision, for example, may be so
manifestly precatory that it could not fairly be read to impose a
"binding obligatio[n]" on a governmental unit,
Pennhurst State
School and Hospital v.
Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 27 (1981), or
its terms may be so "vague and amorphous" that determining whether
a "deprivation" might have occurred would strain judicial
competence. See
Wright v.
Roanoke Redevelop-
26 Nor does it seem plausible to suggest that Congress meant to
preempt such opt-out laws, as "burdening" the statutory right of
employees not to join unions by denying nonrepresented employees
the "benefit" of being able to "contract out" of such standards.
Cf. Addendum B to Brief for Employers Group as
Amicus Curiae
(collecting state statutes containing similar provisions).
133
ment and Housing Authority, 479 U. S. 418, 431-432
(1987). And Congress itself might make it clear that violation of a
statute will not give rise to liability under § 1983, either by
express words or by providing a comprehensive alternative
enforcement scheme. See
Middlesex County Sewerage Authority
v.
National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 U. S. 1 (1981). But
apart from these exceptional cases, § 1983 remains a generally and
presumptively available remedy for claimed violations of federal
law. See also
Dennis v.
Higgins, 498 U. S. 439, 443
(1991).
Our conclusion that Livadas is entitled to seek redress under §
1983 is, if not controlled outright, at least heavily foreshadowed
by our decision in
Golden State II. We began there with the
recognition that not every instance of federal pre-emption gives
rise to a § 1983 cause of action, see 493 U. S., at 108, and we
explained that to decide the availability of § 1983 relief a court
must look to the nature of the federal law accorded pre-emptive
effect and the character of the interest claimed under it,
ibid.27 We had no difficulty concluding, however, as we had
often before, see,
e. g., Hill v.
Florida ex rel.
Watson, 325 U. S.
538 (1945), that the NLRA protects interests of employees and
employers against abridgment by a State, as well as by private
actors; that the obligations it imposes on governmental actors are
not so "vague and amorphous" as to exceed judicial competence to
decide; and that Congress had not meant to foreclose relief under §
1983. In so concluding, we contrasted the intricate scheme provided
to remedy violations by private actors to the complete absence of
provision for relief from governmen-
27 Thus,
Golden State II observed that an NLRA
pre-emption claim grounded in the need to vindicate the primary
jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board, see
San
Diego Building Trades Council v.
Garmon, 359 U. S. 236 (1959), see
n. 10,
supra, is "fundamentally different" from one stemming
from state abridgment of a protected individual interest, see 493
U. S., at 110, a difference that might prove relevant to
cognizability under § 1983.
134
tal interference, see 493 U. S., at 108-109. Indeed, the only
issue seriously in dispute in
Golden State II was whether
the freedom to resort to "peaceful methods of ... economic
pressure," id., at 112 (internal quotation marks omitted), which we
had recognized as implicit in the structure of the Act, could
support § 1983 liability in the same manner as official abridgment
of those rights enumerated in the text would do.
Ibid. The
Court majority said yes, explaining that "[a] rule of law that is
the product of judicial interpretation of a vague, ambiguous, or
incomplete statutory provision is no less binding than a rule that
is based on the plain meaning of a statute."
Ibid.
The right Livadas asserts, to complete the collectivebargaining
process and agree to an arbitration clause, is, if not provided in
so many words in the NLRA, see n. 10,
supra, at least as
immanent in its structure as the right of the cab company in
Golden State II. And the obligation to respect it on the
part of the Commissioner and others acting under color of law is no
more "vague and amorphous" than the obligation in
Golden
State. Congress, of course, has given no more indication of any
intent to foreclose actions like Livadas's than the sort brought by
the cab company. Finding no cause for special caution here, we hold
that Livadas's claim is properly brought under § 1983.
IV
In an effort to give wide berth to federal labor law and policy,
the Commissioner declines to enforce unionrepresented employees'
claims rooted in nonwaivable rights ostensibly secured by state law
to all employees, without regard to whether the claims are valid
under state law or preempted by LMRA § 301. Federal labor law does
not require such a heavy-handed policy, and, indeed, cannot permit
it. We do not suggest here that the NLRA automatically defeats all
state action taking any account of the collectivebargaining process
or every state law distinguishing union-
135
represented employees from others. It is enough that we find the
Commissioner's policy to have such direct and detrimental effects
on the federal statutory rights of employees that it must be
pre-empted. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit is accordingly
Reversed.
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