Sullivan v. American Airlines, Inc.

• Citation: 424 F.3d 267
• Decision Date: 13 September 2005
• Docket Number: Docket No. 04-0325-CV.
• Parties: John SULLIVAN, John Kennedy, David Virella, and Vincent Argentina, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. AMERICAN AIRLINES, INC., Stan Roberts, Edwin P. Argonza, II, Michael A. Chiofalo, Albert Gil, and Peter A. Perez, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

424 F.3d 267

John SULLIVAN, John Kennedy, David Virella, and Vincent Argentina, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. AMERICAN AIRLINES, INC., Stan Roberts, Edwin P. Argonza, II, Michael A. Chiofalo, Albert Gil, and Peter A. Perez, Defendants-Appellees.

Docket No. 04-0325-CV.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued September 28, 2004.

Decided September 13, 2005.

Michael G. O'Neill, New York, New York, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Harry A. Rissetto, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP (Thomas E. Reinert, Jr., and Joseph A. Piesco, Jr., on the brief), Washington, DC, for Defendants-Appellees American Airlines, Inc., Stan Roberts, and Edwin P. Argonza, II.

Before: WALKER, Chief Judge, LEVAL and KATZMANN, Circuit Judges.

JOHN M. WALKER, Chief Judge.

The plaintiffs in this case, union members and employees of American Airlines, were mostly on the losing side of a hard-fought union election. They blame the loss, at least in part, on American, which suspended them during the campaign and then fired them for allegedly posting racist campaign fliers. Although American later reinstated them, the plaintiffs also want their names cleared of the taint of racism flowing from American's conclusion that they posted racist fliers. The plaintiffs also object to campaign fliers posted by their opponents in the election. To clear their names and recover for their loss of reputation, the plaintiffs filed a state-law defamation suit in New York state court against American, two of its managers, and three union members who ran against them.

American removed the case to federal court, arguing that (1) because the plaintiffs' state-law defamation claims were so-called minor disputes under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), 45 U.S.C. § 151 et seq., the district court had jurisdiction over the claims, and (2) because the RLA preempts state-law claims that are minor disputes, the claims should be dismissed. The district court (Carol Bagley Amon, Judge) agreed in part, dismissing one count of the complaint as preempted and remanding the other two counts to state court.

Unlike the district court, we do not reach the question whether the plaintiffs' state-law claims are the type of so-called minor disputes that, under the RLA, are within the exclusive primary jurisdiction of arbitral panels established pursuant to the RLA. Instead, we hold that even if state-law claims qualify as minor disputes under the RLA, the RLA does not completely preempt those claims and therefore does not provide federal courts with original jurisdiction over them. The district court therefore lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over this case. Accordingly, we vacate the district court's judgment and remand with instructions that the case be remanded to state court.

I. BACKGROUND

In the spring of 2002, plaintiffs John Sullivan, David Virella, and Vincent Argentina, American Airlines employees, ran for reelection to their positions as officers of Air Transport Local 501 of the Transport Workers Union of America. Defendants and fellow employees Michael Chiofalo, Albert Gil, and Peter Perez ran on an opposing slate. According to the plaintiffs, during the campaign, the defendants posted in the workplace fliers disparaging Sullivan, Virella, and Argentina.¹

Meanwhile, someone posted a flier accusing defendant Gil of having lied about his ethnicity. American Airlines has strict rules about racial harassment in the workplace, and defendants Stan Roberts and Edwin Argonza, managers at American, investigated the posting of this flier. In the course of the investigation, American suspended with pay plaintiffs Sullivan, Virella, Argentina, and John Kennedy (a fellow employee but not a candidate). Voting in the union elections took place while the plaintiffs were suspended; Sullivan and Virella lost their elections.

As a result of its investigation, American concluded (wrongly, according to the plaintiffs) that the plaintiffs had posted the flier about Gil. American fired all four plaintiffs and issued notices of termination, termed "final advisories," that included statements accusing them of having posted the flier. But after the plaintiffs lodged a grievance with the union protesting their termination, American backed down. American reinstated them, but it recast the "final advisories" (termination notices) as "second advisories" (warnings) that reiterated American's finding that the plaintiffs had posted the flier about Gil.

Not satisfied with just returning to work, the plaintiffs filed suit in New York state court alleging three counts of defamation. Count 1 accused opposing candidates Chiofalo, Gil, and Perez of defaming plaintiffs Sullivan, Virella, and Argentina under state law by posting "libelous" fliers about the plaintiffs; Count 1 also alleged that American was liable for the defamation because it allowed the fliers to remain on a company bulletin board. Count 2 accused American and its managers Roberts and Argonza of defaming all four plaintiffs by, inter alia, issuing the "final advisories" that asserted that the plaintiffs had posted the flier about Gil. Count 3 accused Chiofalo alone of defaming all four plaintiffs by asserting, at a union meeting, that the plaintiffs had posted the flier about Gil.

American responded by removing the case to federal court on the basis that Counts 1 and 2 asserted claims governed by the Railway Labor Act (RLA), 45 U.S.C. §§ 151-52, 154-88 (the airline-relevant provisions). The RLA gives primary jurisdiction over disputes between airlines and their employees that "grow[] out of grievances, or out of the interpretation or application of agreements concerning rates of pay, rules, or working conditions" to "board[s] of adjustment" (arbitral panels) established under the RLA. See 45 U.S.C. § 184; see also id. § 153 (First) (i) (governing railroads);² Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. Buell, 480 U.S. 557, 563, 107 S.Ct. 1410, 94 L.Ed.2d 563 (1987). Such disputes are known as "minor disputes" under the RLA, as distinguished from "major disputes," which involve the formation of collective-bargaining agreements (CBAs) and are governed by different provisions of the RLA. See Consol. Rail Corp. v. Ry. Labor Executives' Ass'n, 491 U.S. 299, 302-03, 109 S.Ct. 2477, 105 L.Ed.2d 250 (1989) (explaining the difference between minor and major disputes). The major-dispute provisions of the RLA are not relevant to this case.

On its face, the plaintiffs' complaint raises only state-law defamation claims. The Supreme Court has explained, however, that "where the resolution of a state-law claim depends on an interpretation of [a collective-bargaining agreement], the claim is preempted" by the RLA and must be brought before one of the arbitral panels established pursuant to the RLA. Hawaiian Airlines v. Norris, 512 U.S. 246, 261, 114 S.Ct. 2239, 129 L.Ed.2d 203 (1994). American argued before the district court that because resolution of the state-law defamation claims against it (Counts 1 and 2 of the complaint) would require the district court to interpret the collective-bargaining agreement, the claims were preempted and could not be heard in state or federal court.

As to Count 1, the district court disagreed. It found that the state-law defamation claim based on American's alleged endorsement of defamatory fliers posted by Chiofalo, Gil, and Perez could be evaluated without reference to the CBA and thus was not preempted by the RLA. As to Count 2, however, the district court agreed with American that resolving it would require interpreting the CBA and that it was preempted. It is from the dismissal of Count 2 alone that the plaintiffs appeal to this court.

II. DISCUSSION

Because the district court dismissed Count 2 on the pleadings, we review the district court's decision de novo, taking the allegations in the complaint as true and making all reasonable inferences in the plaintiffs' favor. Ziemba v. Wezner, 366 F.3d 161, 163 (2d Cir.2004) (per curiam). The plaintiffs raised only state-law claims in their complaint, and the district court understandably, though mistakenly, accepted the premise of American's notice of removal that if the state-law claims in Counts 1 and 2 were preempted by the RLA, the district court had subject-matter jurisdiction over the case to decide the preemption question.³ That premise, though it found some support in our case law when the district court made its ruling was mistaken. To understand why, we must examine the law of federal preemption in general and RLA preemption in particular as well as the difference between "complete" preemption, which can be the basis for federal subject-matter jurisdiction, and "ordinary" preemption, which cannot.

A. Preemption and federal subject-matter jurisdiction

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. American removed this case to federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 1441, which permits removal only of actions over which "the district courts of the United States have original jurisdiction ...." Id. § 1441(a); see also id. § 1441(b). If it exists at all, original jurisdiction in this case can be based solely on federal-question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331, which gives federal district courts jurisdiction over suits "arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States." The district court assumed (as did the parties) that if Count 2 was preempted by the RLA, a federal statute, Count 2 therefore arose under federal law.

The plaintiffs, however, raised only state-law claims in their state-court complaint. As a general rule, a suit seeking recovery under state law is not transformed into a suit "arising under" federal law merely because, to resolve it, the court may need to interpret federal law. See Gully v. First Nat'l Bank, 299 U.S. 109, 115, 57 S.Ct. 96, 81 L.Ed. 70 (1936) ("Not every question of federal law emerging in a suit is proof that a federal law is the basis of the suit."). This principle...