Associated Builders & Contractors v. Perry
| Decision Date | 14 February 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 92-1704,92-1704 |
| Citation | 16 F.3d 688 |
| Parties | 17 Employee Benefits Cas. 2568 ASSOCIATED BUILDERS & CONTRACTORS, Saginaw Valley Area Chapter; Coleman Electric, Inc.; Hovey Electric, Inc.; Helm Electric, Inc., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Lowell W. PERRY, Director of Department of Labor, State of Michigan, Defendant, Michigan Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association, Intervenor-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
David J. Masud (argued and briefed), Howard A. Vex, Masud & Gilbert, Saginaw, MI, for plaintiffs-appellees.
George H. Kruszewski (argued and briefed), Ann E. Neydon, Sachs, Nunn, Kates, Kadushin, O'Hare, Helveston & Waldman, Detroit, MI, for defendant and intervenor-appellant.
Before: MERRITT, Chief Judge; and GUY, and BATCHELDER, Circuit Judges.
The Michigan Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) appeals the district court's granting of summary judgment for the plaintiffs because Michigan's law regulating apprenticeship programs is preempted by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. Secs. 1001-1461. Because we find that NECA, the intervenor in this action, lacks standing to bring this appeal, we DISMISS the appeal.
Section 3 of Michigan's Electrical Administrative Act, Mich.Comp.Laws Ann. Sec. 338.883 (West 1992), gave the Electrical Administrative Board the power to make and enforce rules and regulations necessary to carry out its provisions. In 1973, the Board promulgated R. 338.1017 ("Rule 17"), which provided:
An apprentice shall be registered with the board and hold an apprentice's card; however, there is no fee for this registration. An applicant for an apprentice registration card shall have attained the age of 18 years and shall be sponsored by the employing contractor. The work of an apprentice shall at all times be under direct supervision of a person holding a class 2 or class 3 license. To assure proper supervision, a person holding a class 2 or class 3 license shall not have more than 1 apprentice working under him at any time.
Rule 17 (emphasis added). Pursuant to a consent judgment entered into on December 14, 1973, the Michigan Department of Labor decided to enforce Rule 17 on a company-wide basis, instead of a job site to job site basis.
Because of the difficulties in enforcing Rule 17, in October of 1990, the Michigan legislature amended the Michigan Electrical Administrative Act to further regulate electrician apprentices. The legislation became effective on March 28, 1991. Most notably, the Act now requires that the ratio of electrical journeymen or master electricians to apprentice electricians be one-to-one (the "ratio requirement"). The law also requires electrical contractors to enroll their apprentices only in training programs that have been approved by the Michigan Department of Labor and that contain equivalent requirements to those imposed by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training (the "equivalency requirement").
Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC) is a trade association whose membership is composed of general contractors, subcontractors, builders, and suppliers engaged in the construction business in Michigan. Plaintiffs Coleman Electric, Hovey Electric, and Helm Electric are members of ABC. ABC members provide apprenticeship training, but not under a program approved by the U.S. Department of Labor. The plaintiffs also do not maintain a 1:1 journeyman-to-apprentice ratio, but assign apprentices to journeymen as the needs of the job site demand. The plaintiffs agreed that since 1973, Rule 17 has required a 1:1 ratio, but argued that this rule has not been enforced. None of the plaintiffs recognizes or bargains with any labor organization.
These plaintiffs filed suit in district court on October 24, 1991, to enjoin Lowell Perry, director of the Michigan Department of Labor, from enforcing the ratio and equivalency amendments. The plaintiffs claimed that the new requirements were preempted by ERISA and by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. Secs. 141-187.
On November 13, 1991, the Michigan Chapter of the NECA filed a motion to intervene. This chapter of NECA is a trade association whose membership comprises electrical contractors within Michigan, most of whom employ electricians represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Almost all of NECA's members employ apprentices who are trained under a program that meets the standards approved by the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training; these apprentices thus meet the new law's "equivalency requirement." NECA contractors also use at least one licensed electrician for every apprentice on the job site, the same "ratio requirement" imposed by Rule 17 and the new amendment. It is unclear whether NECA members have imposed this 1:1 ratio because this ratio was mandated by Michigan's Rule 17, because it is included in their collective bargaining agreements, or both.
NECA made several assertions in its motion to intervene:
5. NECA has a direct interest in insuring that MCLA 338.883e, enacted as a result of public concern and legislative awareness of the demonstrated danger and the anguish and pain caused by allowing untrained individuals to work unsupervised on intrinsically hazardous installations, be enforced to insure that proper safety and quality standards are preserved in the industry and to deny a competitive advantage to contractors, such as the plaintiffs herein, who employ unlicensed, untrained, and unsupervised individuals whom they designate as apprentices to perform work NECA members and other responsible employers have performed by experienced journeymen and qualified apprentices under their supervision.
6. If Plaintiffs' request for injunctive relief is granted, NECA's interest in continued enforcement of MCLA 338.883e will be fatally impaired.
7. NECA has great respect for the office of the Attorney General of the State of Michigan which will represent the defendant Director of the Michigan Department of Labor, but NECA believes its different interest and interest of those it represents, which are essentially the business and safety interest of the industry, will not be adequately represented by that office.
The district court granted NECA's motion to intervene under the permissive intervention rule, Fed.R.Civ.P. 24(b).
On April 23, 1992, the district court granted the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and denied the State's counter-motion for summary judgment 817 F.Supp. 49. The court ordered the State to refrain from enforcing the ratio and equivalency requirements found in the amendments because the new provisions were preempted by section 514(a) of ERISA. The court did not address the issue of NLRA preemption, which the plaintiffs also had raised.
The State did not appeal the district court's order, advising the plaintiffs in a May 11, 1992 letter that "the Department of Labor is satisfied that Judge Cleland has correctly resolved the issues and we will not be requesting an appeal of his decision." NECA, as intervenor, however, filed an appeal. The plaintiffs filed a motion to dismiss the appeal based on NECA's lack of standing to appeal, and a panel of this Court ordered that because of the complexity of the standing issue, that motion would be submitted to the panel addressing the merits of the appeal. Thus, we first must decide whether appellant NECA has standing to bring this appeal. 1
We find that because NECA lacks standing to appeal, the appeal must be dismissed.
An intervenor need not have the same standing necessary to initiate a lawsuit in order to intervene in an existing district court suit where the plaintiff has standing. Trbovich v. United Mine Workers, 404 U.S. 528, 536-39, 92 S.Ct. 630, 635-36, 30 L.Ed.2d 686 (1972). And an intervenor, by right or permission, normally has the right to appeal an adverse final judgment by a trial court, just as any other party can. Stringfellow v. Concerned Neighbors in Action, 480 U.S. 370, 375-76, 107 S.Ct. 1177, 1182, 94 L.Ed.2d 389 (1987). However, as any other party, an intervenor seeking to appeal must have standing under Article III of the Constitution entitling it to have the court decide the merits of the dispute. Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 68, 106 S.Ct. 1697, 1706, 90 L.Ed.2d 48 (1986). The standing requirement therefore may bar an appeal even though a litigant had standing before the district court. United States v. Van, 931 F.2d 384, 387 (6th Cir.1991).
Article III of the Constitution confines federal courts to adjudicating actual "cases" or "controversies." Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3324, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). The constitutional requirement is that the "plaintiff must allege personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief." Id. at 751, 104 S.Ct. at 3324. This "injury in fact" requirement mandates that the party allege " 'such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy' as to warrant his invocation of federal-court jurisdiction." Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2205, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975) (quoting Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962)). As the Allen Court noted, this constitutional component has not been precisely defined but requires an allegation that the injury is "distinct and palpable," and "not 'abstract' or 'conjectural' or 'hypothetical.' " Allen, 468 U.S. at 751, 104 S.Ct. at 3324. Palpable economic injuries "have long been recognized as sufficient to lay the basis for standing, with or without a specific statutory provision for judicial review." Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 733-34, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 1365, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972). In addition, a sufficient "injury in fact" can be...
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