Super Tire Engineering Company v. Corkle 8212 1554

• Citation: 416 U.S. 115,94 S.Ct. 1694,40 L.Ed.2d 1
• Decision Date: 16 April 1974
• Docket Number: No. 72,72
• Parties: SUPER TIRE ENGINEERING COMPANY et al., Petitioners, v. Lloyd W. McCORKLE et al. —1554
• Court: United States Supreme Court

416 U.S. 115

94 S.Ct. 1694

40 L.Ed.2d 1

SUPER TIRE ENGINEERING COMPANY et al., Petitioners,

v Lloyd W. McCORKLE et al.

No. 72—1554.

Argued Jan. 15, 1974.

Decided April 16, 1974.

Syllabus

Workers engaged in an economic strike in New Jersey are eligible for public assistance through state welfare programs. Petitioners, employers whose plants were struck, brought this suit for injunctive and declaratory relief against such eligibility, claiming that the regulations according benefits to striking workers were invalid because they interfered with the federal labor policy of free collective bargaining expressed in the Labor Management Relations Act and with other federal policy set forth in the Social Security Act. Before the case was tried, the labor dispute was settled and the strike ended. The District Court, rejecting the respondent union's contention that the case had been mooted, dismissed the complaint on the grounds that Congress was the appropriate forum for the claim and that the challenged laws did not violate the Supremacy Clause. The Court of Appeals remanded the case with instructions to vacate and dismiss for mootness. Held: To the extent that declaratory relief was sought, the case-or-controversy requirement of Art. III, § 2, and the Declaratory Judgment Act is completely satisfied. Pp. 121—127.

(a) Even though the case for an injunction dissolved with the settlement of the strike and the strikers' return to work, the petitioners and respondent state officials may still retain sufficient interests and injury to justify declaratory relief. Pp. 121—122.

(b) The challenged governmental action is not contingent upon executive discretion and has not ceased, but is a fixed and definite policy which, by its continuing presence, casts what may well be a substantial adverse effect on petitioners' interests. Oil Workers Unions v. Missouri, 361 U.S. 363, 80 S.Ct. 391, 4 L.Ed.2d 373; Harris v. Battle, 348 U.S. 803, 75 S.Ct. 34, 99 L.Ed. 634, distinguished. Pp. 122—125.

(c) If judicial review were conditioned on the existence of an economic strike, this case most certainly would be of the type presenting an issue 'capable of repetition, yet evading review,' Southern Pac. Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U.S. 498, 515, 31 S.Ct. 279, 283, 55 L.Ed. 310. It suffices that the litigant show an immediate and definite governmental action or policy that has adversely affected and continues to affect a present interest, since to require the presence of an active labor dispute would unduly tax the litigant by slighting claims of adverse injury from actual or immediately threatened governmental action, and since otherwise a state policy affecting a collective-bargaining arrangement but not involving a fine or other penalty could be only rarely adjudicated, and the purposes of the Declaratory Judgment Act would be frustrated. Pp. 125—127.

469 F.2d 911, reversed and remanded.

Lawrence M. Cohen, Lederer, Fox & Grove, Chicago, Ill., for petitioners.

Robert F. O'Brien, Tomar, Parks, Seliger, Simonoff & Adourian, Camden, N.J., and Stephen Skillman, Trenton, N.J., for respondents.

Mr. Justice BLACKMUN delivered the opinion of the Court.

In New Jersey, workers engaged in an economic strike are eligible for public assistance through state welfare programs. Employers whose plants were struck insti- tuted this suit for injunctive and declaratory relief against such eligibility. Before the case was tried, the labor dispute was settled and the strike came to an end. The question presented is whether a 'case' or 'controversy' still exists, within the meaning of Art. III, § 2, of the Constitution, and of the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201, 2202.

I

A collective-bargaining agreement between petitioners Super Tire Engineering Company and Supercap Corporation, affiliated New Jersey corporations,¹ and Teamsters Local Union No. 676, the certified collective-bargaining representative for the two corporations' production and maintenance employees, expired on May 14, 1971. Because a new agreement had not as yet been reached, the employees promptly went out on strike. Some four weeks later, with the strike continuing, the two corporations, and their president and chief executive officer, filed the present suit in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey against various New Jersey officials.²

The complaint alleged that many of the striking employees had received and would continue to receive pub- lic assistance through two New Jersey public welfare programs,³ pursuant to regulations issued and administered by the named defendants. The petitioners sought a declaration that these interpretive regulations,⁴ accord- ing benefits to striking workers, were null and void because they constituted an interference with the federal labor policy of free collective bargaining expressed in the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 29 U.S.C. § 141 et seq., and with other federal policy pronounced in provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935, viz., 42 U.S.C. §§ 602(a)(8)(C), 606(e)(1), and 607(b)(1)(B).⁵ The petitioners also sought injunctive relief against the New Jersey welfare administrators' making public funds available to labor union members engaged in the strike.

With their complaint, the petitioners filed a motion for a preliminary injunction. The supporting affidavit by the individual petitioner recited the expiration of the collective-bargaining agreement, the failure of the parties to reach a new agreement, the commencement and continuation of the strike, the application by many of the strikers for state welfare benefits, and their receipt of such benefits from the beginning of the strike to the date of the affidavit. The affiant further stated that the availability of these benefits interfered with and infringed upon free collective bargaining as guaranteed by Congress and 'hardened the resolve of the said strikers to remain out of work in support of their bargaining demands,' App. 32, and, in addition, that

'the current strike will undoubtedly be of longer duration than would have otherwise been the case; that the impact of the grant of welfare benefits and public assistance to the strikers involved has resulted in the State of New Jersey subsidizing one party to the current labor dispute; and that such subsidization by the State has resulted in upsetting the economic balance between employer and employees otherwise obtained in such a labor dispute.' Ibid.

At the hearing held on June 24 on the motion for preliminary injunction, the union, now a respondent here, was permitted to intervene. App. 37. Counsel for the union contended that 'this entire matter . . . has been mooted' because 'these employees voted to return to work and are scheduled to return to work tomorrow morning.'⁶ App. 39. The District Court, nonetheless, pro- ceeded to the merits of the dispute and, on the basis of the holding in ITT Lamp Division v. Minter, 435 F.2d 989 (CA1 1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 933, 91 S.Ct. 1526, 28 L.Ed.2d 868 (1971), ruled that the appropriate forum for the petitioners' claim was the Congress, and that the New Jersey practice of according aid to striking workers was not violative of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The court denied the motion for preliminary injunction and dismissed the complaint. App. 45—46. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, by a divided vote, did not reach the merits but remanded the case with instructions to vacate and dismiss for mootness. 469 F.2d 911, 922 (1972). We granted certiorari to consider the mootness issue. 414 U.S. 817, 94 S.Ct. 128, 38 L.Ed.2d 50 (1973).

II

The respondent union invites us to conclude that this controversy between the petitioners and the State became moot when the particular economic strike terminated upon the execution of the new collective-bargaining agreement and the return of the strikers to work in late June. That conclusion, however, is appropriate with respect to only one aspect of the lawsuit, that is, the request for injunctive relief made in the context of official state action during the pendency of the strike.

The petitioners here have sought, from the very beginning, declaratory relief as well as an injunction. Clearly, the District Court had 'the duty to decide the appropriateness and the merits of the declaratory request irrespective of its conclusion as to the propriety of the issuance of the injunction.' Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S. 241, 254, 88 S.Ct. 391, 399, 19 L.Ed.2d 444 (1967); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 166, 93 S.Ct. 705, 733, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973); Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 468—469, 94 S.Ct. 1209, 39 L.Ed.2d 505 (1974). Thus, even though the case for an injunction dissolved with the subsequent settlement of the strike and the strikers' return to work, the parties to the principal controversy, that is, the corporate petitioners and the New Jersey officials, may still retain sufficient interests and injury as to justify the award of declaratory relief. The question is 'whether the facts alleged, under all the circumstances, show that there is a substantial controversy, between parties having adverse legal interests, of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment.' Maryland Casualty Co. v. Pacific Coal & Oil Co., 312 U.S. 270, 273, 61 S.Ct. 510, 512, 85 L.Ed. 826 (1941). And since this case involves governmental action, we must ponder the broader consideration whether the short-term nature of that action makes the issues presented here 'capable of repetition, yet evading review,' so that petitioners are adversely affected by government 'without a chance of redress.' Southern Pac. Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U.S. 498, 515, 31 S.Ct. 279, 283, 55 L.Ed. 310 (1911).

A. We hold that the facts here provide full and complete satisfaction of the requirement of the Constitution's Art. III, § 2, and the Declaratory Judgment Act, that a case or controversy...