National Labor Relations Board v. Nash-Finch Co.

404 U.S. 138, 92 S. Ct. 373, 30 L. Ed. 2d 328, 1971 U.S. LEXIS 97, 78 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2967

Opinions

MR. Justice Douglas

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Title 28 U. S. C. § 2283 provides;

“A court of the United States may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a State court except as expressly authorized by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments.”

The question is whether the National Labor Relations Board may, through proceedings in a federal court, enjoin a state court order which regulates peaceful picketing governed by the federal agency. The District Court rejected the Board's contention that it is within the exception to § 2283,¹ recognized in Leiter Minerals, Inc. v. United States, 352 U. S. 220, as respects suits brought by the United States. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 434 F. 2d 971. The ease is here on a petition for a writ of certiorari which we granted, 402 U. S. 928.

When a union began organizing employees of certain stores in Grand Island, Nebraska, the union filed unfair labor practice charges against the company. The General Counsel issued a complaint. A hearing was held and a Trial Examiner sustained the complaint and recommended that the company cease and desist. Shortly thereafter and before the Board had acted, the union picketed the stores. The company thereupon petitioned the Nebraska state court for an injunction. The state court issued a restraining order, limiting the pickets to two at each store, enjoining them from blocking or picketing entrances or exits and from distributing literature pertaining to the dispute which would halt or slow trafile, from instigating conversations with customers in any manner relating to the dispute, from mass picketing, from acts of physical coercion against persons driving to work, and from doing any act in violation of Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28-812, which makes unlawful “loitering about, picketing or patrolling the place of work . . . against the will of such person.” The injunction also bans anyone other than a bona fide union . member from picketing unless he becomes a defendant in the state proceedings. Finally, the injunction bars anyone, other than pickets and named defendants, from picketing, distributing handbills, or otherwise “caus[ing] to be published or broadcast any information pertaining to the dispute . . . between the parties.”

Later the Board entered its decision and order accepting in part the Trial Examiner’s recommendations and rejecting parts not material to the present controversy.

The Board then filed this suit in the Federal District Court seeking to restrain the enforcement of the state court injunction on the ground that it regulated conduct which was governed exclusively by the National Labor Relations Act. As noted, both the District Court and the Court of Appeals denied the Board relief. The Court of Appeals held that for the purposes of § 2283 the Board is “an administrative agency of the United States, and is not the United States.” 434 F. 2d, at 975. Congress from the beginning has restricted the authority of the federal judiciary to interfere with state court actions. See Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, 43-44. The present § 2283 is a revision of earlier provisions of federal statutes which were construed to allow within limits such federal injunctions in favor of federal agencies. Bowles v. Willingham, 321 U. S. 503, 510. Any exception in favor of federal agencies must, however, be “implied,” ibid., unless it comes within the exceptions stated in §2283.

It is suggested that this federal injunction was “in aid” of the jurisdiction of the federal court since the suit is in the District Court by reason of 28 U. S. C. § 1337 which grants jurisdiction over “any civil action or proceeding arising under any Act of Congress regulating commerce.” In Capital Service, Inc. v. NLRB, 347 U. S. 501, an employer invoked the aid both of a state court and of the federal Board against picketing. The Board sought a federal court injunction under § 10 (1) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 160 (l), which specifically allows it wherever an unfair labor practice respecting a secondary boycott or picketing violative of § 8 (b) (4) or § 8 (b) (7) of the Act is involved. We ruled that the state injunction “restrains conduct which the District Court was asked to enjoin in the § 10 (1) proceeding.” Id., at 505. We held that under those circumstances an injunction by the federal court was “necessary in aid of its jurisdiction” over commerce, because the federal court to exercise its jurisdiction “freely and fully” must “first remove the state decree.” Id., at 506.

In the instant case the company did not file any charges with the Board which claimed that the union’s picketing violated §8 (b)(4) or §8 (b)(7) of the Act, 73 Stat. 542 and 544, 29 U. S. C. § 158 (b) (4) and § 158 (b)(7).

Section 10 (j) gives the District Court similar authority in respect of an unfair labor practice of the employer under § 8 (a)(1) of the Act which protects the right of employees to organize. But a resort to court action, the Board has held, does not violate § 8 (a)(1). See Clyde Taylor Co., 127 N. L. R. B. 103, 109.

The action in the instant case does not seek an injunction to restrain specific activities upon which the Board has issued a complaint but is based upon the general doctrine of pre-emption. We therefore do not believe this case falls within the narrow exception contained in § 2283 for matters “necessary in aid of its jurisdiction.” There is in the Act no express authority for the Board to seek injunctive relief against pre-empted state action. The question remains whether there is implied authority to do so.

It has long been held that the Board, though not granted express statutory remedies, may obtain appropriate and traditional ones to prevent frustration of the purposes of the Act. We held in In re National Labor Relations Board, 304 U. S. 486, 496, that even in the absence of an express statutory remedy, the Board might petition for writ of prohibition against premature invocation of the review jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals. In Amalgamated Workers v. Edison Co., 309 U. S. 261, we held that the Board had implied authority to institute contempt proceedings for violation of court decrees enforcing orders of the Board. In Nathanson v. NLRB, 344 U. S. 25, we found an implied authority of the Board to file claims in bankruptcy covering the sums included in its back-pay awards. The claims were not given priority under § 64 (a) (5) of the Bankruptcy Act, but this was because “the United States [was] collecting for the benefit of a private party,” id., at 28, not as suggested, post, at 149, because the Board’s juridical status was something less than that of the United States.²

We conclude that there is also an implied authority of the Board, in spite of the command of § 2283, to enjoin state action where its federal power pre-empts the field. Our starting point is contained in the observation of Mr. Chief Justice Hughes in Amalgamated Workers v. Edison Co., supra, at 265.

“The Board as a public agency acting in the public interest, not any private person or group, not any employee or group of employees, is chosen as the instrument to assure protection from the described unfair conduct in order to remove obstructions to interstate commerce.”

The purpose of the Act was to obtain “uniform application” of its substantive rules and to avoid the “diversities and conflicts likely to result from a variety of local procedures and attitudes toward labor controversies.” Garner v. Teamsters Union, 346 U. S. 485, 490. The federal regulatory scheme (1) protects some activities, though not violence (see United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U. S. 715, 729-731), (2) prohibits some practices, and (3) leaves others to be controlled by the free play of economic forces. We said in Garner v. Teamsters Union, supra, at 500:

“For a state to impinge on the area of labor combat designed to be free is quite as much an obstruction of federal policy as if the state were to declare picketing free for purposes or by methods which the federal Act prohibits.”

In Leiter Minerals, Inc. v. United States, 352 U. S. 220, a state suit over mineral rights in public lands was pending, the parties being private persons. The United States brought suit in the federal court to quiet title to the mineral rights and sought and obtained a federal injunction against prosecution of the state proceedings. In holding that § 2283 impliedly allowed such an exception we said:

“The statute is designed to prevent conflict between federal and state courts. This policy is much more compelling when it is the litigation of private parties which threatens to draw the two judicial systems into conflict than when it is the United States which seeks a stay to prevent threatened irreparable injury to a national interest. The frustration of superior federal interests that would ensue from precluding the Federal Government from obtaining a stay of state court proceedings except under the severe restrictions of 28 U. S. C. § 2283 would be so great that we cannot reasonably impute such a purpose to Congress from the general language of 28 U. S. C. § 2283 alone.” Id., at 225-226.

In Leiter, the United States brought suit under the authority of the Attorney General. Here it is the Board that moved to prevent “irreparable injury to a national interest.” The Board is the sole protector of the “national interest”³ defined with particularity in the Act. Leiter, of course, was initiated by the Attorney General; but underlying the controversy were federal agencies in the Department of the Interior responsible for administration of the public lands. The fact that the moving party was a federal agency, not the Attorney General, was considered irrelevant in Bowles v. Willingham, supra, where the Administrator of the Emergency Price Control Act sued to enjoin a state court from interfering with orders of the federal agency. An exception from the general ban on federal injunctions against state court action was implied by reason of the fact that the method of review of the orders of the federal agency was in the Emergency Court of Appeals. But there was no suggestion that suit by or against the Administrator was not a suit of the United States.⁴ The purpose of § 2283 was to avoid unseemly conflict between the state and the federal courts where the litigants were private persons, not to hamstring the Federal Government and its agencies in the use of federal courts to protect federal rights. We can no more conclude here than in Leiter that a general statute, limiting the power of federal courts to issue injunctions, had as its purpose the frustration of federal systems of regulation. See Brown v. Wright, 137 F. 2d 484, 488. The frustration of superior federal interests by the general language of § 2283 cannot reasonably be imputed. See NLRB v. Sunshine Mining Co., 125 F. 2d 757, 762; NLRB v. New York State Board, 106 F. ; NLRB v. Industrial Commission, 84 F. Supp. 593, aff’d, 172 F. 2d 389.

The fact that the Board is given express authority to seek enforcement of its orders in some sections of the Act⁵ is not persuasive that the Act expresses a policy to bar the Board from enforcing the national interests on other matters. The instances where the Board is given explicit authority to seek the aid of federal courts are not exclusive examples, as we have already shown. They are only particularized instances of specific enforcement devices relating to specified orders, not a denial by implication that the Act and the Board would not be entitled to federal aid or protection in other instances, as illustrated by In re National Labor Relations Board, supra; Amalgamated Workers v. Edison Co., supra; and Nathanson v. NLRB, supra. The exclusiveness of the federal domain is clear; and where it is a public authority that seeks protection of that domain, the way seems clear. For the Federal Government and its agencies, the federal courts are the forum of choice. For them, as Leiter indicates, access to the federal courts is “preferable in the context of healthy federal-state relations.” 352 U. S., at 226.

Whether there are parts of the state court injunction that should survive our reversal of the judgment below is a question we do not reach. It will be open on the remand of the cause.

Reversed and remanded.

1

For the history of present § 2283 see H. R. Rep. No. 308, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., A181.

2

The basis of our decision in Nathanson was that “[t]he priority granted by [§ 64 (a) (5), 11 U. S. C. § 104 (a) (5)] ... was designed ‘to secure an adequate revenue to sustain the public burthens and discharge the public debts.’ ” 344 U. S., at 27-28. Because there was “no function ... of assuring the public revenue” and “[t]he beneficiaries of the claims [were] private persons,” id., at 28, we found it inappropriate to apply the priority for claims owing the United States and, instead, gave the claims the same “treatment tha[t] other wage claims enjoy[ed].” Id., at 29. The suggestion that Nathanson is a stronger case for equating the status of the Board to that of the United States disregards both the policies of the Bankruptcy Act upon which we relied in that decision and the federal pre-emption which inheres in the present case.

Cases such as Reconstruction Finance Corp. v. J. G. Menihan Corp., 312 U. S. 81, do not support a miserly interpretation of the Board’s powers. There, we held that costs of litigation could be assessed against a corporation which Congress had launched into the commercial world with the power to “sue and be sued.” Contrary to the dissent’s assertion that the case turned on the failure of Congress to manifest an intent “to bestow the privileges and immunities of the United States on a federal agency,” post, at 150, our decision there was based upon the grant of “the unqualified authority to sue and be sued [which] placed petitioner upon an equal footing with private parties as to the usual incidents of suits in relation to the payment of costs and allowances.” 312 U. S., at 85-86.

3

Amalgamated Clothing Workers v. Richman Bros. Co., 348 U. S. 511, held that a private party under the protection of the Board’s order could not obtain injunctive relief in a federal court against an anti-picketing order issued by a state court. And see Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281.

4

Actions against the National Labor Relations Board are dismissed on the ground that they are against a federal agency exercising a governmental regulatory function and so are suits against the United States, which cannot be sued without the consent of Congress. Clover Fork Coal Co. v. NLRB, 107 F. 2d 1009. The same holds for the Atomic Energy Commission, Cotter Corp. v. Seaborg, 370 F. 2d 686; the Civil Service Commission, Soderman v. U. S. Civil Service Commission, 313 F. 2d 694; the Veterans Administration, Evans v. U. S. Veterans Admin. Hospital, 391 F. 2d 261; and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Holmes v. Eddy, 341 F. 2d 477. Similarly, an action by the Director General of Railroads was held to be on behalf of the United States and thus was not barred by the relevant statute of limitations. Davis v. Corona Coal Co., 265 U. S. 219.

5

Congress has vested the Board with broad powers to seek in-junctive relief in the district courts. Section 10 (1), 29 U. S. C. § 160 (Z), for example, gives the Board power to obtain an injunction where an investigation produces reasonable cause to believe that a charge of secondary boycott or illegal picketing activity is true. Section 10 (j), 29 U. S. C. § 160 (j), provides a similar basis of power for other unfair labor practices. “In case of contumacy or refusal to obey a subpena issued to any person” during “hearings and investigations, which, in the opinion of the Board, are necessary and proper for the exercise of [its] powers” under §§ 9 and 10, 29 U. S. C. §§ 159 and 160, the Board may seek injunctive relief from a district court requiring compliance. 29 U. S. C. §161 (2).