Reed v. United Transportation Union

• Decision Date: 11 January 1989
• Docket Number: No. 87-1031,87-1031
• Citation: 488 U.S. 319,109 S.Ct. 621,102 L.Ed.2d 665
• Parties: G.P. REED, Petitioner v. UNITED TRANSPORTATION UNION et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

488 U.S. 319

109 S.Ct. 621

102 L.Ed.2d 665

G.P. REED, Petitioner

v UNITED TRANSPORTATION UNION et al.

No. 87-1031.

Argued Nov. 2, 1988.

Decided Jan. 11, 1989.

Syllabus

Two years after the last of the complained-of events occurred, petitioner, an officer of a local chapter of respondent union, filed suit against the union and various of its officers, alleging that they had violated his right to free speech as to union matters under § 101(a)(2) of Title I of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA). There is no statute of limitations expressly applicable to § 101 actions. The District Court denied respondents' summary judgment motion, rejecting their argument that petitioner had filed his suit out of time and holding that the action was governed by North Carolina's 3-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions. The Court of Appeals reversed, construing DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476, to require that petitioner's § 101(a)(2) claim be governed by the 6-month statute of limitations set forth in § 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) for filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board.

Held: Section 101(a)(2) claims are governed by state general or residual personal injury statutes of limitations. Pp. 323-334.

(a) The well-established general rule requires that the most closely analogous state statute of limitations be borrowed for a federal cause of action not supplied by Congress with its own limitations period. However, a narrow exception to that rule requires the application of a statute of limitations from elsewhere in federal law when the analogous state statute will frustrate or significantly interfere with federal policies, the federal law clearly provides a closer analogy, and the federal policies at stake and the practicalities of litigation render the federal rule significantly more appropriate. Pp. 323-325.

(b) The general borrowing rule requires that state general or residual personal injury statutes of limitations be applied to § 101(a)(2) suits. As a preliminary matter, it must be concluded that all such suits should be characterized in the same way, since the diversion of resources to collateral statute-of-limitations litigation would interfere with § 101(a)(2)'s core purpose of enhancing union democracy by protecting union members' rights to free speech and assembly from incursion by union leadership. Because § 101(a)(2) is modeled on the First Amendment, it is readily analogized to state personal injury actions under the reasoning of Owens v. Okure, 488 U.S. 235, 109 S.Ct. 573, 102 L.Ed.2d 594 where it was held that suits under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which also protects the exercise of First Amendment rights, are governed by state general or residual personal injury statutes of limitations. Moreover, since such state limitations periods are of sufficient length to accommodate the practical difficulties faced by § 101(a)(2) plaintiffs—which include identifying the injury, deciding in the first place to sue and thereby to antagonize union leadership, and finding an attorney—the practicalities of litigation do not require a search for a more analogous statute of limitations. Pp. 325-327.

(c) The narrow exception to the general borrowing rule does not require the adoption of the § 10(b) limitations period for § 101(a)(2) claims. Respondents' argument to the contrary fails to take seriously the requirement that analogous state statutes of limitations are to be used unless they frustrate or significantly interfere with federal policies. The 6-month § 10(b) statute of limitations was crafted to accommodate federal interests in stable bargaining relationships between employers and unions and in private dispute resolution under collective-bargaining agreements. Insofar as those interests are implicated by § 101(a)(2) claims, however, the relationship will generally be tangential or remote as in the present case, which involves an internal union dispute that can have only an indirect impact on economic relations between union and employer and on labor peace. More importantly, the core federal interest furthered by § 101(a)(2)—the interest in union democracy promoted by union members' free speech and assembly rights—simply had no part in the design of the § 10(b) statute of limitations for unfair labor practice charges. Indeed, Title I of the LMRDA was a response to a perception that the NLRA, including its unfair labor practices provisions, had failed to provide the necessary protections for free speech and other union members' rights. Hence, it is not the case here that the federal policies at stake in § 101(a)(2) actions make § 10(b) significantly more appropriate than the analogous state statutes of limitations that the established borrowing rule favors. DelCostello, supra, distinguished. Pp. 327-334.

828 F.2d 1066 (CA4 1987), reversed and remanded.

BRENNAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, STEVENS, O'CONNOR, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 334. WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 334.

John W. Gresham, Charlotte, N.C., for petitioner.

Clinton J. Miller, III, Cleveland, Ohio, for respondents.

Justice BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

We are called upon in this case to decide what statute of limitations governs a claim by a union member under § 101(a)(2) of Title I of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA), Pub.L. 86-257, 73 Stat. 522, 29 U.S.C. § 411(a)(2), alleging that the union violated its member's right to free speech as to union matters.¹ Congress enacted no statute of limitations expressly applicable to § 101 actions.

Petitioner Reed, the Secretary and Treasurer of Local 1715 (Local) of respondent United Transportation Union (Union), received reimbursement from the Local for "time lost" carrying out his union duties. After an audit the Union's president, respondent Hardin, disallowed these payments. Hardin ruled that petitioner was not entitled to the payments because he had failed to obtain approval for them prior to doing the tasks that caused him to lose time, and because his salary as an officer of the Local was intended to cover all his official duties. When petitioner subsequently attempted to enforce a policy that reimbursements required prior approval—denying unapproved claims by the president and other officers of the Local—Hardin overruled these decisions. Petitioner thereupon unsuccessfully sought reinstatement of his disallowed payment. In a series of letters to Hardin, the last dated August 2, 1983, petitioner alleged that more stringent standards had been applied to his reimbursement claims because he had been critical of the Local's president. Threatening suit, he asserted that the disallowance amounted to harassment for expressing his views on union matters and violated LMRDA § 101. Petitioner did not file this action in the Western District of North Carolina against the Union and various of its officers, however, until August 2, 1985.

Respondents moved for summary judgment, arguing that petitioner had filed his suit out of time. Respondents maintained that on the reasoning of DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983), petitioner's § 101 claim should be governed by the statute of limitations that applies to the filing of charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging unfair labor practices defined in § 8 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. § 158. Section 10(b) of the NLRA, 29 U.S.C. § 160(b), provides that such charges must be filed within six months.² The District Court denied summary judgment, holding that petitioner's action was more akin to a civil rights claim than an unfair labor practice charge, and hence was governed by North Carolina's 3-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions in accordance with the rule this Court established in Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985). 633 F.Supp. 1516 (1986).

The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed, construing DelCostello to require that petitioner's § 101(a)(2) claim be governed by NLRA § 10(b). 828 F.2d 1066 (1987). We granted certiorari, 485 U.S. 933, 108 S.Ct. 1105, 99 L.Ed.2d 267 (1988), to settle a conflict among Courts of Appeals as to the statute of limitations applicable to § 101(a)(2) actions.³ We now reverse the Fourth Circuit's decision, and hold that § 101(a)(2) claims are governed by state general or residual personal injury statutes, which are to be identified in conformity with our decision this Term in Owens v. Okure, 488 U.S. 235, 109 S.Ct. 573, 102 L.Ed.2d 594.

I

Congress not infrequently fails to supply an express statute of limitations when it creates a federal cause of action. When that occurs, "[w]e have generally concluded that Congress intended that the courts apply the most closely analogous statute of limitations under state law." DelCostello, supra, 462 U.S., at 158, 103 S.Ct., at 2287. See, e.g., Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U.S. 143, 147, 107 S.Ct. 2759, 2762, 97 L.Ed.2d 121 (1987) (noting that the Rules of Decision Act usually requires that a state statute be borrowed, and also that "[g]iven our longstanding practice of borrowing state law, and the congressional aware- ness of this practice, we can generally assume that Congress intends by its silence that we borrow state law"); Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696, 703-705, 86 S.Ct. 1107, 1111-1113, 16 L.Ed.2d 192 (1966); Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U.S. 392, 395, 66 S.Ct. 582, 584, 90 L.Ed. 743 (1946).

"State legislatures do not devise their limitations periods with national interests in mind," however, "and it is the duty of the federal courts to assure that the importation of state law will...