PREEMPTION-NLRB

Glacier Nw., Inc. v. Int’l Bhd. of Teamsters Loc. Union No. 174, 2023 U.S. LEXIS 2299, 2023 WL 3742578 (S. Ct. June 1, 2023) (Barrett, J.). Glacier Northwest, a concrete company, depends on its truck drivers to deliver concrete to customers in a timely manner. But when relations between Glacier and its drivers soured, the drivers went on strike. Their labor union allegedly designed the strike with the intent to sabotage Glacier’s property. Although Glacier managed to avoid damage to its delivery trucks by deploying emergency maneuvers, the concrete that it had already produced that day went to waste. Glacier sued the union in state court for destroying its property. But the company did not get very far: The state court dismissed Glacier’s tort claims on the ground that they were preempted by the National Labor Relations Act. We reverse. Sometimes a party to a labor dispute goes directly to a court—raising the specter that state law will say one thing about the conduct underlying the dispute while the NLRA says another. It is a bedrock rule, of course, that federal law preempts state law when the two conflict. U. S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2. Preemption under the NLRA is unusual, though, because our precedent maintains that the NLRA preempts state law even when the two only arguably conflict. San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236, 245, 79 S. Ct. 773, 3 L. Ed. 2d 775 (1959) (“When an activity is arguably subject to §7 or §8 of the [NLRA], the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence of the National Labor Relations Board”). This doctrine—named Garmon preemption after the case that originated it—thus goes beyond the usual preemption rule. Under Garmon, States cannot regulate conduct “that the NLRA protects, prohibits, or arguably protects or prohibits.” Wis. Dep’t of Indus., Labor & Human Rels. v. Gould, Inc., 475 U. S. 282, 286, 106 S. Ct. 1057, 89 L. Ed. 2d 223 (1986). The Union failed to “take reasonable precautions to protect” against this foreseeable and imminent danger. Bethany Medical Center, 328 N. L. R. B., at 1094. Indeed, far from taking reasonable precautions to mitigate foreseeable danger to Glacier’s property, the Union executed the strike in a manner designed to compromise the safety of Glacier’s trucks and destroy its concrete. Such conduct is not “arguably protected” by the NLRA; on the contrary, it goes well beyond the NLRA’s protections. See NLRB v. Marshall Car Wheel & Foundry Co., 218 F. 2d 409, 411, 413 (CA5 1955) (strike unprotected when employees abandoned their posts without warning “when molten iron in the plant cupola was ready to be poured off,” even though “a lack of sufficient help to carry out the critical pouring operation might well have resulted in substantial property damage”). Thus, accepting the complaint’s allegations as true, the Union did not take reasonable precautions to protect Glacier’s property from imminent danger resulting from the drivers’ sudden cessation of work. The state court thus erred in dismissing Glacier’s tort claims as preempted on the pleadings.