Knox County Local, Nat. Rural Letter Carriers' Assoc. v. National Rural Letter Carriers' Ass'n, 82-5357

• Decision Date: 17 February 1984
• Docket Number: No. 82-5357,82-5357
• Citation: 720 F.2d 936
• Parties: 115 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2980, 99 Lab.Cas. P 10,551, 10 Media L. Rep. 1350 KNOX COUNTY LOCAL, NATIONAL RURAL LETTER CARRIERS' ASSOC., et al., Plaintiffs- Appellants, v. NATIONAL RURAL LETTER CARRIERS' ASSOCIATION, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 936

720 F.2d 936

115 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2980, 99 Lab.Cas. P 10,551,

10 Media L. Rep. 1350

KNOX COUNTY LOCAL, NATIONAL RURAL LETTER CARRIERS' ASSOC.,

et al., Plaintiffs- Appellants,

v.

NATIONAL RURAL LETTER CARRIERS' ASSOCIATION, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 82-5357.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued June 13, 1983.

Decided Feb. 17, 1984.

Daniel J. Goodman, Knoxville, Tenn., Arthur L. Fox, II (Lead Counsel), Washington, D.C., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Allen Blair (Lead Counsel), argued, Memphis, Tenn., William Peer, Washington, D.C., for defendants-appellees.

Before JONES and WELLFORD, Circuit Judges, and ALLEN, Chief District Judge. ^*

NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge.

This action is presently before the Court upon the appeal of Knox County Local, National Rural Letter Carriers (Knox County Local) from an order of the district court granting summary judgment in favor of the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association, et al. (NRLCA) and denying a mandatory injunction requiring the NRLCA to publish Knox County Local's paid advertisement in a national union magazine. Upon consideration of the issues presented by this appeal, we reverse the district court and remand this cause for a hearing under Title I of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, 29 U.S.C. Secs. 401 et seq. (LMRDA).

The facts in this case are largely uncontroverted. The NRLCA's union officers negotiated a collective bargaining agreement with the United States Postal Service in 1981. That agreement provided for the implementation of an "L-Route." The national officials admit that this provision represented a "major change" which would require "many individual carriers to suffer reduction in their route evaluations and in some instances, considerable reductions in salary." The national officials supported the ratification of the contract. The Knox County Local in Tennessee, however, vehemently opposed any contract containing an L-Route provision. A local ratification referendum among the members' elected representatives in the local union state associations was scheduled. A national convention and a ratification initiative on the agreement among those union officials entitled to vote were also scheduled.

In an effort to discourage ratification of the contract, Knox County Local attempted to publicize the contract's substantive deficiencies, to build associations among other union members opposed to those deficiencies and to inspire members to lobby their state representatives to oppose contract ratification. In order to achieve these ends, the Knox County Local delegates tried to place an advertisement in the national union magazine, The National Rural Letter Carrier. Knox County Local members hoped, by virtue of the publication, both to voice their opposition to the L-Route provision and to locate possible opposition to that provision in other state affiliated unions.

The National Rural Letter Carrier is the union's official weekly magazine and is circulated nationwide among the union's 64,000 dues-paying members. All of the recipients of the magazine would be covered by the new collective bargaining agreement. Dues from each of those recipients help finance the publication. Commercial advertisements which are accepted for publication from members and other outside merchants also help support the magazine. No guidelines have been established to determine the quantity or content of accepted advertisements.

Knox County Local submitted to the magazine a camera-ready copy of their commercial ad together with $460.00, the standard rate for a full-page commercial ad. In an alleged effort to avoid possible union dissent created by the ad's content, the NRLCA refused to publish the advertisement. Olin Armentrout, the NRLCA secretary-treasurer and magazine editor, advised Knox County Local that "we will not accept an advertisement soliciting opposition to this contract" because it would create "internal union strife." The national union officials published the proposed contract in the magazine, however, and used that forum to urge its ratification.

In its memorandum opinion, the district court held that summary judgment was an appropriate disposition of Knox County Local's attempt to require the NRLCA to publish its views because "[n]either Sec. 411 [of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act] nor the First Amendment guarantees advertising space in the defendants' publication ... without [their] consent." The substantive legal question which we must resolve, therefore, is whether Title I of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act and the First Amendment prevent the NRLCA from refusing to accept a member's paid advertisement based on its content.

Title I of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, commonly known as the Landrum-Griffin Act, provides in pertinent part:

Section 411. Bill of Rights: Constitution and Bylaws of Labor Organizations.

(a)(1) Equal Rights. Every member of a labor organization shall have equal rights and privileges within such organization to nominate candidates, to vote in elections or referendums of the labor organization, to attend membership meetings, and to participate in the deliberations and voting upon the business of such meetings, subject to reasonable rules and regulations in such organization's constitution and bylaws.

(2) Freedom of Speech and Assembly. Every member of any labor organization shall have the right to meet and assemble freely with other members; and to express any views, arguments, or opinions; and to express at meetings of the labor organization his views, upon candidates in an election of the labor organization or upon any business properly before the meeting, subject to the organization's established and reasonable rules pertaining to the conduct of meetings: provided, that nothing herein shall be construed to impair the right of a labor organization to adopt and enforce reasonable rules as to responsibility of every member toward the organization as an institution and to his refraining from conduct that would interfere with its performance of its legal or contractual obligations.

Sec. 101(a)(1) and (2); 29 U.S.C. Sec. 411(a)(1) and (2).

This "bill of rights of members of labor organizations" is modeled after the First Amendment and guarantees to members the rights of free speech and assembly, and the right to participate in union deliberations. The legislative history of Sec. 411 clearly demonstrates that the bill's sponsors sought to protect the rights of union members to assemble and to voice their views on union affairs without fear of union reprisal. The bill was designed to allow members to participate actively in a "democratic" union. See 105 Cong.Rec. 6478 (1959). Sec. 411 originated as a Senate floor amendment, calculated to extend to union members the broad rights necessary to permit them to enjoy as union members the same rights they possess as citizens. A consultant to the sponsors of the amendment, Archibald Cox cautioned:

Because most of the bill was written on the floor of the Senate or House of Representatives and because many sections contain calculated ambiguities or political compromises ... the courts would be well advised to seek out the underlying rationale without placing great emphasis upon close construction of the words.

See Cox, Internal Affairs of Labor Unions Under the Labor Reform Act of 1959, 58 Mich.L.Rev. 819, 852 (1960). Moreover, the framers of Title I purposely drafted its provisions more loosely than other titles because they recognized the difficulty of applying a narrow remedial statute to every conceivable controversy.

Consistent with this legislative history, the Supreme Court in Hall v. Cole, 412 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1943, 36 L.Ed.2d 702 (1973) rejected the argument that the absence of any specific language in Title I providing for attorney's fees indicated the congressional intent to preclude such awards. The Court emphasized the flexible nature of the LMRDA's "bill of rights":

Title I litigation necessarily demands that remedies "be tailored to fit facts and circumstances admitting of almost infinite variety," and Sec. 102 was therefore cast as a broad mandate to the courts to fashion "appropriate relief." Indeed, any attempt on the part of Congress to spell out all the remedies available under Sec. 102 would create the "danger that these [remedies] not listed might be prescribed with the result that the courts would be fettered in their efforts to grant relief according to the necessities of the case."

412 U.S. at 10-11, 93 S.Ct. at 1949. The Second Circuit as well, in Navarro v. Gannon, 385 F.2d 512 (2nd Cir.1967), stressed that the rights conferred by Sec. 101(a)(2) could not be limited to the literal language of the Act. The Court concluded:

We must determine whether Sec. 101(a)(2) guarantees a right to meet without interference from the international union by considering the broad purposes of the bill of rights.

385 F.2d at 518 (emphasis added).

The legislative history of Title I and the interpretations of that history in Hall and Navarro, therefore, compel a broad reading of the rights conferred by Secs. 101(a)(1) and (2). Furthermore, Sec. 102 grants to the courts latitude in fashioning appropriate relief to open channels of communication among members, to facilitate the kind of informed debate which leads to enlightened self-government, and to promote the development of democracy within the union. The latitude granted to us by Title I clearly does not permit unjustifiable judicial interference with internal union affairs. That latitude, however, no less clearly does permit judicial intervention to protect the rights of union members to free speech and to receive information, without which they would be unable to exercise fully their right to participate in deliberations on union affairs.

This Court in Blanchard v. Johnson, 532 F.2d 1074 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, ...