Minnesota State Board For Community Colleges v. Knight Minnesota Community College Faculty Association v. Knight, s. 82-898

• Decision Date: 21 February 1984
• Docket Number: Nos. 82-898,82-977,s. 82-898
• Citation: 465 U.S. 271,104 S.Ct. 1058,79 L.Ed.2d 299
• Parties: MINNESOTA STATE BOARD FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES et al. v. Leon W. KNIGHT et al. MINNESOTA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FACULTY ASSOCIATION et al. v. Leon W. KNIGHT et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

465 U.S. 271

104 S.Ct. 1058

79 L.Ed.2d 299

MINNESOTA STATE BOARD FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES et al.

v Leon W. KNIGHT et al.

MINNESOTA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FACULTY ASSOCIATION et al.

v. Leon W. KNIGHT et al.

Nos. 82-898, 82-977.

Argued Nov. 1, 1983.

Decided Feb. 21, 1984.

Syllabus

The Minnesota Public Employment Labor Relations Act (PELRA) authorizes state employees to bargain collectively over terms and conditions of employment. The statute also grants professional employees, such as college faculty, the right to "meet and confer" with their employers on matters related to employment that are outside the scope of mandatory bargaining. However, if professional employees forming an appropriate bargaining unit have selected an exclusive representative for mandatory bargaining, their employer may "meet and confer" on nonmandatory subjects only with that representative. Appellant Minnesota State Board for Community Colleges (Board) operates the Minnesota community college system, and appellant Minnesota Community College Faculty Association (MCCFA) is the designated exclusive representative of the faculty of the State's community colleges. On the state level, MCCFA and the Board established "meet and confer" committees to discuss policy questions applicable to the entire system. On the campus level, the MCCFA chapters and the college administrations created local "meet and confer" committees to discuss policy questions applicable only to the campus. Appellees, 20 Minnesota community college faculty instructors who are not members of MCCFA, filed suit in Federal District Court, challenging, inter alia, the constitutionality of MCCFA's exclusive representation of community college faculty in the "meet and confer" processes. The District Court held that the "meet and confer" provisions of PELRA deprived appellees of their First and Fourteenth Amendment speech and associational rights by denying them an opportunity to participate in their employer's making of policy, and the court granted declaratory and injunctive relief.

Held: The "meet and confer" provisions do not violate appellees' constitutional rights. Pp. 280-292.

(a) Appellees have no constitutional right, either as members of the public, as state employees, or as college instructors, to force officers of the State acting in an official policymaking capacity to listen to appellees' views. Nothing in the First Amendment or in this Court's case law interpreting it suggests that the rights to speak, associate, and petition require government policymakers to listen or respond to communications of members of the public on public issues. Neither appellees' status as public employees nor the fact that an academic setting is involved gives them any special constitutional right to a voice in the making of policy by their employer. Even assuming that First Amendment speech rights take on a special meaning in an academic setting, they do not require government to allow teachers to participate in institutional policymaking. Pp. 280-288.

(b) Appellees' speech and associational rights have not been infringed by PELRA's restriction of participation in "meet and confer" sessions to the faculty's exclusive representative. The State has not restrained appellees' freedom to speak on any education-related issue or to associate or not to associate with whom they please, including the exclusive representative. Nor has the State attempted to suppress ideas. Similarly, appellees' associational freedom has not been impaired, since they are free to form whatever advocacy groups they like. Pp. 288-290.

(c) Appellees' exclusion from "meet and confer" sessions does not deny them equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The State has a legitimate interest in ensuring that its public employers hear one, and only one, voice presenting the majority view of its professional employees on employment-related policy questions, and permitting selection of "meet and confer" representatives to be made by the exclusive representative is a rational means of serving that interest. Pp. 291-292.

571 F.Supp. 1, reversed.

Eric R. Miller, St. Paul, Minn., for appellants.

Edwin Vieira, Jr., Manassas, Va., for appellees.

Justice O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

The State of Minnesota authorizes its public employees to bargain collectively over terms and conditions of employment. It also requires public employers to engage in official exchanges of views with their professional employees on policy questions relating to employment but outside the scope of mandatory bargaining. If professional employees forming an appropriate bargaining unit have selected an exclusive representative for mandatory bargaining, their employer may exchange views on nonmandatory subjects only with the exclusive representative. The question presented in this case is whether this restriction on participation in the nonmandatory-subject exchange process violates the constitutional rights of professional employees within the bargaining unit who are not members of the exclusive representative and who may disagree with its views. We hold that it does not.

I

A.

In 1971, the Minnesota legislature adopted the Public Employment Labor Relations Act (PELRA), Minn.Stat. §§ 179.61 et seq. (1982), to establish "orderly and constructive relationships between all public employers and their employees. . . ." Id., § 179.61. The public employers covered by the law are, broadly speaking, the state and its political subdivisions, agencies, and instrumentalities. Id., § 179.63. In its amended form, as in its original form, PELRA provides for the division of public employees into appropriate bargaining units and establishes a procedure, based on majority support within a unit, for the designation of an exclusive bargaining agent for that unit. Id., §§ 179.67, 179.71, 179.741. The statute requires public employers to "meet and negotiate" with exclusive representatives concerning the "terms and conditions of employment," which the statute defines to mean "the hours of employment, the compensation therefor . . ., and the employer's personnel policies affecting the working conditions of the employees." Id., §§ 179.63, 179.67, 179.71. The employer's and employees' representatives must seek an agreement in good faith. Id., § 179.63, subd. 16.

PELRA also grants professional employees, such as college faculty, the right to "meet and confer" with their employers on matters related to employment that are outside the scope of mandatory negotiations. Id., §§ 179.63, 179.65. This provision rests on the recognition "that professional employees possess knowledge, expertise, and dedication which is helpful and necessary to the operation and quality of public services and which may assist public employers in developing their policies." Id., § 179.73. The statute declares it to be the state's policy to "encourage close cooperation between public employers and professional employees" by providing for "meet and confer" sessions on all employment-related questions not subject to mandatory bargaining. Ibid. There is no statutory provision concerning the "meet and confer" process, however, that requires good faith efforts to reach agreement. See Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Local 59 v. Minneapolis Special School Dist. No. 1, Minn., 258 N.W.2d 802, 804, n. 2 (1977).

PELRA requires professional employees to select a representative to "meet and confer" with their public employer. Minn.Stat. § 179.73. If professional employees in an appropriate bargaining unit have an exclusive representative to "meet and negotiate" with their employer, that representative serves as the "meet and confer" representative as well. Indeed, the employer may neither "meet and negotiate" nor "meet and confer" with any members of that bargaining unit except through their exclusive representative. Id., § 179.66, subd. 7. This restriction, however, does not prevent professional employees from submitting advice or recommendations to their employer as part of their work assignment. Ibid. Moreover, nothing in PELRA restricts the right of any public employee to speak on any "matter related to the conditions or compensation of public employment or their betterment" as long as doing so "is not designed to and does not interfere with the full, faithful and proper performance of the duties of employment or circumvent the rights of the exclusive representative if there be one." Id., § 179.65, subd. 1.

B

Appellant Minnesota State Board for Community Colleges (State Board) operates the Minnesota community college system. At the time of trial, the system comprised eighteen institutions located throughout the state. Each community college is administered by a president, who reports, through the chancellor of the system, to the State Board.

Prior to 1971, Minnesota's community colleges were governed in a variety of ways. On some campuses, faculty had a strong voice in administrative policymaking, expressed through organizations such as faculty senates. On other campuses, the administration consulted very little with the faculty. Irrespective of the level of faculty involvement in governance, however, the administrations of the colleges retained final authority to make policy.

Following enactment of PELRA, appellant Minnesota Community College Faculty Association (MCCFA) ¹ was designated the exclusive representative of the faculty of the state's community colleges, which had been deemed a single bargaining unit.² MCCFA has "met and negotiated" and "met and conferred" with the State Board since 1971. The result has been the negotiation of successive collective bargaining agreements in the intervening years and, in order to implement the "meet and confer" provision, a restructuring of governance practices in the community college system.

On the state level, MCCFA and the Board established "meet and confer" committees to discuss questions of policy applicable to the...