“A dictum in a Supreme Court opinion may be brushed aside by the Supreme Court as dictum when the exact question is later presented, but it cannot be treated lightly by inferior federal courts until disavowed by the Supreme Court.”
How later courts described this case
- “A dictum in a Supreme Court opinion may be brushed aside by the Supreme Court as dictum when the exact question is later presented, but it cannot be treated lightly by inferior federal courts until disavowed by the Supreme Court.”
- decisions of the Supreme Court and their clear implications are absolutely binding on the inferior federal courts
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Unfortunately, the majority analysis here leads to a quite unjustifiable outcome. The result is that Mary Weatherman, personal secretary to the general manager of a rural electric membership corporation, has been lawfully fired for signing a petition asking for the reinstatement in his job of a friend and fellow worker who lost his arm in the course of his employment. Whatever may be our discomfiture at the Board’s maneuvers on remand, only the gravest of reasons should lead us to sanction such a lamentable injustice.
While it might have been more politic for the Board to have reopened the hearing, the Company argues only one specific fact which it would have tried to establish during such a reopening: the Company’s “involve[ment]” in “three (3) litigation cases” (presumably with a competitive investor-owned utility). There is slight likelihood that this “new fact” would materially change the basis for evaluating Weatherman’s status as a “confidential secretary.” The fact is that Weatherman’s status was well explored and ventilated at the original hearing, and both we and the Board should be able to reach the requisite conclusions based on that record.
Hendricks County Rural Electric Membership Corp. v. N. L. R. B., 603 F.2d 25 (7th Cir. 1979) (“Hendricks I”) does indeed hold that a confidential secretary is excluded from the protection of the Labor Act (whether or not the confidences are labor relations-related). Hendricks I is, for better or for worse, the present law of this *771 Circuit. 1 But there is abundant evidence in the record to support the Board’s conclusion that Weatherman is not properly classified as a confidential secretary.
The Company’s strongest (or at least most fully developed) argument to the contrary seems to be that Weatherman was responsible for processing employees’ medical and disability insurance claims — admittedly confidential. But these were the confidences of employees she had to keep. It is simply ludicrous that one should be classified as part of “management” and lose the protections conferred on “labor” because one is entrusted with the confidences of one’s fellow workers.
On a broader issue, the majority seems to assert that Hendricks I holds that “confidential employees” (not limited to secretaries and, of course, not limited by the labor relations’ nexus) are unprotected under the Act. With the most profound deference, I find the holding of Hendricks I to be more narrowly directed specifically to secretaries. That case teaches that:
The legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act, as interpreted in Bell Aerospace, requires the conclusion that all secretaries working in a confidential capacity, without regard to labor relations, be excluded from the Act. 603 F.2d at 30 .
This conclusion of our Court may be consonant with the dicta of Bell Aerospace, 2 which found, quoting the Second Circuit that, “surely Congress could not have supposed that, while ‘confidential secretaries’ could not be organized, their bosses could be.” 416 U.S. at 284, 94 S.Ct. at 1767 (quoting 475 F.2d at 491 — 92). If there is anything relating to confidential employees “upon which the holding [in Bell Aerospace] itself was constructed” (as the majority here perceives the issue), it is most evidently the relationship of confidential secretaries to their “managerial” bosses.
Everything else — beyond confidential secretaries — that relates to “confidential employees” is at the farther reaches of dictum, both in Bell Aerospace and in Hendricks I. Nothing about confidential employees generally is found in the holding in either case, nor is the status of such employees generally, a part of the essential framework from which the respective holdings emerge.
The majority admonishes us of the need for deference to the dicta of the Supreme Court. I have no quarrel with this as far as it goes, but the fact remains that the broad dicta in footnote 12 of Bell Aerospace about “confidential employees” are ambiguous 3 and essential to nothing. There are dicta and there are dicta, and the rule of stare decisis must give them effect appropriate to the circumstances under which they appear. 4 To build a whole new body of law about “confidential employees” uninvolved in labor relations, on the footnote dicta of Bell Aerospace — all in the name of defer *772 ence to the Supreme Court — is quite simply totally unwarranted. 5 To paint with a broad brush about the purported exclusion of “confidential employees” (other than those having the well-accepted “labor nexus”) from the protection of the Act may be to strike a major blow at white collar unionism. Many, if not most, white collar workers are involved in something which may be argued to be “confidential” in some general sense. There are matters of credit, of costs, of designs, of customer lists, of prices, of medical records — the list is endless. 6 I do not perceive at all that the dicta of Bell Aerospace point down this road. Nor does Hendricks I require such a journey.
With the utmost respect, I dissent.
. But see Union Oil Company of California v. N. L. R. B., 607 F.2d 852 (9th Cir. 1979), which reaffirmed the traditional Board standard under The B. F. Goodrich Co., 115 N.L.R.B. 722 , 724 (1956), that the employee, to be excluded, must assist in a confidential capacity with respect to labor relations. Accord, N. L. R. B. v. Allied Products Co., Richard Bros. Div., 548 F.2d 644 (6th Cir. 1977).
. N. L. R. B. v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U.S. 267 , 94 S.Ct. 1757 , 40 L.Ed.2d 134 (1974).
. Thus footnote 12 contains the following quotation from a House Report: “Most of the people who would qualify as ‘confidential’ employees are executives and are excluded from the act in any event
The Board, itself, normally excludes from bargaining units confidential clerks and secretaries to such people as these.”
Does this suggest that lower-level employees, not clerks or secretaries to executives, are rarely to be excluded?
. The Supreme Court long ago stated:
It is a maxim not to be disregarded, that general expressions, in every opinion, are to be taken in connection with the case in which those expressions are used. If they go beyond the case, they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit when the very point is presented for decision. The reason of this maxim is obvious. The question actually before the court is investigated with care and considered in its full extent. Other principles which may serve to illustrate it, are considered in their relation to the case decided, but their possible bearing on all other cases is seldom completely investigated. Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264 , 399-400, 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821).
. In.Hendricks I this court said in commenting on Bell Aerospace, ,“Nor do we think that the policies favoring the exclusion of all managerial employees from the Act necessarily dictate the exclusion of all confidential secretaries as well.” 603 F.2d at 29 .
. “Because most employees have an arguably confidential relationship with management, and because an expansive application of the exclusionary rule would deprive many employees of the right to bargain collectively, the Board has narrowly construed the definition of confidential employee.” Union Oil Company of California v. N. L. R. B., supra, n. 1 at 853.