Reply Brief — Metropolitan Life Insurance v. Massachusetts

Supreme Court brief1984

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Upreme Court. US

/ILED

No. 84-356 DET 28 1994

ALEXANDER L. STEVAS

In the i CLERK

Supreme Court of the United States

OctosBer TERM, 1984

THE TRAVELERS INSURANCE COMPANY,

APPELLANT

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS

On Appeal From The Supreme Judicial Court

For The Commonwealth Of Massachusetts

REPLY BRIEF FOR APPELLANT

THE TRAVELERS INSURANCE COMPANY

LANE McGoveRN

Counsel of Record

STEVEN A. KAUFMAN

Ropes & Gray

225 Franklin Street

Boston, Massachusetts 02110

(617) 423-6100

Attorneys for Appellant,

The Travelers Insurance Company

Blanchard Press. Inc., Boston. Mass. — Law Printers (617) 426-6690

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

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TABLE OF CAESE

Belknap, Inc. v. Hale, 103 S. Ct. 3172 (1983)....... 2,4,5

Brown v. Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 54,

oo ere eee 2,3, 4,5

DeVeau v. Braisted, 363 U.S. 144 (1960)............... 3

Free v. Bland, 369 U.S. 663 (1962).................. 3,4

H. K. Porter & Co. v. NLRB, 397 U.S. 99 (1970)......... 3

Hill v. Florida, 325 U.S. 583 (1945).................... 3

Local 24, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v.

Oliver, 358 U.S. 283 (1959)..................048. 4,5

Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Com-

I Ge Ws TI Is oc occ kcivccicecsevess 5

Malone v. White Motor Corp., 435 U.S. 497 (1978)...... 4

New York Telephone Co. v. New York Dept. of Labor,

I ogo oe ge) eee ae 4

In the

Supreme Court of the United States

Ocroser TERM, 1984

No. 84-356

THE TRAVELERS INSURANCE COMPANY,

APPELLANT,

Dv.

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS,

On Appeal From The Supreme Judicial Court

For The Commonwealth Of Massachusetts

REPLY BRIEF FOR APPELLANT

THE TRAVELERS INSURANCE COMPANY

Argument

Unaccountably, the Commonwealth's motion comes very

close to a complete failure to respond to appellants’ arguments

on NLRA preemption. The Commonwealth does, in a foot-

note, cite two decisions and incorporate by reference its

previous motion to dismiss or affirm filed two years ago. No

attempt is made, however, to analyze this Court’s recent deci-

sions or to address any of the appellants’ arguments based

upon them. Perhaps the Commonwealth’s thought is that the

subject of NLRA preemption will be overlooked if it isn't

mentioned. Such an approach irresponsibly misestimates the

very substantial importance of this issue.

The Commonwealth impedes analysis, and misguides the

Court, when it asserts in a footnote that Belknap, Inc. v. Hale,

103 §.Ct. 3172 (1983), and Brown v. Hotel and Restaurant

Employees Local 54, 104 S.Ct. 3179 (1984), “implicitly af-

firmed” that Section 47B is not preempted by the National

Labor Relations Act. See Commonwealth's Motion To Dismiss

Or Affirm at i-ii, note*. They do no such thing. The holdings

of Belknap and Brown do not address, let alone decide,

whether the NLRA preempts a state statute, such as Section

47B, which effectively dictates the substantive content of col-

lective bargaining agreements. Moreover, the preemption

principles enunciated and applied in Belknap and Brown ad-

vance the appellants’ contention that collective bargaining

freedom is so central to federal labor policy that state legisla-

tion interfering with that freedom cannot be tolerated in the

absence of a clear congressional! directive to the contrary.

1. The state legislation at issue in Brown was a New Jersey

statute that disqualified certain persons from serving as of-

ficials of labor organizations representing casino industry

employees, and provided that labor organizations with dis-

qualified officials may be prohibited from collecting dues and

administering pension and welfare funds. 104 S.Ct. at 3182.

The New Jersey Casino Control Commission, which was

charged with enforcing the statute, determined that certain

officials of Local 54 were “disqualified persons” under the

statute, and threatened to prohibit the union from collecting

dues until those officials were replaced. 104 S.Ct. at 3184. The

union and its officials filed suit to bar the Commission from

imposing sanctions, contending that the state statute was

preempted by the NLRA. 7d. In support of that contention

they argued thus:

(1) Hill v. Florida, 325 U.S. 583 (1945), established

the proposition that the NLRA confers an unfettered

right on employees to choose the officials of their bargain-

ing representatives.

(2) The New Jersey statute interferes with the exercise

of that federally created righ*

(3) Where a state law in.-rferes with the exercise of a

federally created right, “[t]he relative importance to the

State of its own law is not material . . . for the Framers

of our Constitution provided that the federal law must

prevail.” Free v. Bland, 369 U.S. 663, 666 (1962).

(4) Therefore, the New Jersey statute must yield to

superior federal authority.

104 S.Ct. at 3186-87.

This Court accepted, indeed endorsed, the logic of the

union’s argument. Id. The Court rejected the union’s conclu-

sion solely on the ground that the decision in Hill v. Florida,

325 U.S. 538 (1945), had been superseded by subsequent

federal legislation that contained “an express disclaimer of

pre-emption of state laws regulating the responsibilities of

union officials ....“ 104 S.Ct. at 3188 (quoting from

DeVeau v. Braisted, 363 U.S. 144, 157 (1960)).!

The argument advanced by the union in Brown is parallel in

all salient respects, save one, to the appellants’ argument in the

case at bar. The appellants have argued thus:

(1) H.K. Porter & Co. v. NLRB, 397 U.S. 99, 108

(1970), establishes the proposition that the NLRA re-

quires “private bargaining under governmental super-

' The federal legislation that superseded Hill v. Florida was the 1959

enactment of Section 603(a) of the Labor-Management Reporting and

Disclosure Act, 29 U.S.C. § 553(a), which provided in pertinent part that

“nothing in this chapter shall reduce or limit the responsibilities of any labor

organization or any officer ... under ... the laws of any state....” See

Brown, 104 S.Ct. at 3188-89.

vision of the procedure alone, without any official com-

pulsion over the actual terms of the contract.” See also,

Local 24, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v.

Oliver, 358 U.S. 283, 296 (1959).

(2) Section 47B undeniably and concededly exerts

“official compulsion” over the actual terms of collective

bargaining agreements. See Travelers’ Jurisdictional

Statement at 10-12 and App. D at 20a.

(3) “Where, as here, the issue is one of an asserted

substantive conflict with a federal enactment, then ‘[t}he

relative importance to the State of its own law is not

material ... for the Framers of our Constitution provid-

ed that the federal law must prevail’.” Brown, 104 S. Ct.

at 3187 (quoting from Free v. Bland, 369 U.S. 663, 666

(1962) ).

(4) Therefore, Section 47B must yield to superior

federal authority.

Of course, there is no federal statute, analogous to Section

603(a) of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure

Act, that contains “an express disclaimer of pre-emption of

state laws regulating” the health benefit terms of collective

bargaining agreements. In this crucial respect, the case at bar

differs from Brown, and that difference mandates, under the

principles of Brown, a decisively different result.’

2. Belknap v. Hale, 103 S.Ct. 3172 (1983), decided the

question

whether the National Labor Relations Act... preempts a

misrepresentation and breach-of-contract action against

* In this same respect, the present case differs from New York Telephone

Co. v. New York Dept. of Labor, 440 U.S. 519 (1979), and Malone v. White

Motor Corp., 435 U.S. 497 (1978): In both New York Telephone and

Malone, state statutes that interfered with the collective bargaining freedom

conferred by the NLRA were saved from preemption by other federal

statutes which manifested a clear congressional intent to permit the very

interference effected by the state statutes.

the employer brought in state court by strike replace-

ments who were displaced by reinstated strikers after

having been offered and accepted jobs on a permanent

basis and assured that they would not be fired to accom-

modate returning strikers.

Id. at 3174. The Court upheld the state causes of action, but

only after determining that allowing such state actions would

not interfere in any area that the NLRA leaves “to be con-

trolled by the free play of economic forces.” Id. at 3177

(quoting from Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations

Commission, 427 U.S. 132, 140 (1976) ). Plainly, on that basis

alone, the result in Belknap cannot credibly be said to “im-

plicitly” require upholding Section 47B; for it is undeniable,

and indeed uncontested (See Travelers’ Jurisdictional State-

ment at 10-12 and App. D at 20a), that Section 47B does in-

terfere with the collective bargaining of health benefits, an

area that Congress most assuredly committed “to be controlled

by the free play of economic forces.” See Travelers’ Jurisdic-

tional Statement at 9-10.

Further, the reasoning of Belknap, when applied to state

legislation that interferes with the free negotiation of a manda-

tory subject of collective bargaining—i.e., when applied to a

state statute such as Section 47B—requires that the state law

be preempted. In Belknap, just as in Brown, Oliver, and

Machinists, this Court stated in unequivocal terms that the

NLRA “proscribes state regulation and state-law causes of

action concerning conduct that Congress intended to be

unregulated....” Belknap, 103 S. Ct. at 3177. Thus the

reasoning of Belknap reaffirms the holding in Oliver (358 U.S.

at 296; emphasis added):

Since the federal law operates here, in an area where its

authority is paramount, to leave the parties free, the in-

consistent application of state ‘aw is necessarily outside

the power of the State.

Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, and the reasons set forth in

Travelers’ Jurisdictional Statement, probable jurisdiction

should be noted.

Respectfully submitted,

LANE McGovern