Lindsay v. APFA: Employees Have No Private Cause of Action under the RLA

The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has held that two provisions of the Railway Labor Act (“RLA”), 45 U.S.C. section 152, do not provide a private cause of action that would enable unhappy employees to overturn reworked agreements entered into by their union. In Lindsay v. Association of Professional Flight Attendants, 581 F.3d 47 (2nd Cir. 2009), the Circuit Court affirmed a district court order and stated that the first and seventh provisions of the RLA do not enable individual flight attendants to challenge the validity of a restructured agreement entered into between their union, American Airlines, and its parent company. The Court also found that the RLA preempted the flight attendants’ state law claims.

BACKGROUND

In 2003, American Airlines negotiated and executed three Restructuring Participation Agreements (RPA) with its unions in order to avoid filing for bankruptcy. The 2003 RPA, which included significant concessionary terms by the flight attendants, replaced the 2001 Collective Bargaining Agreement previously entered into between American and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA).

A group of flight attendants challenged the validity of the RPA, claiming that it violated sections one and seven of the Railway Labor Act, 42 U.S.C. section 151 et al. (RLA), because the Union unlawfully replaced the 2001 Collective Bargaining Agreement with the RPA. The plaintiffs sought to have the RPA declared void, the original Collective Bargaining Agreement enforced, and the airline and union pay damages.

In 2008, the Eastern District of New York ruled in favor of the defendants, granting their motions for summary judgment. The District Court held that the cited RLA provisions do not provide for a private cause of action, and that the state law claims were preempted by the RLA. The plaintiffs appealed to the Second Circuit.

Sections 1 and 7 of the RLA do not provide for a private cause of action

The Railway Labor Act, 42 U.S.C. section 152, was passed in 1926 to encourage collective bargaining and alternative dispute resolution in order to resolve labor disputes, instead of strikes that could interrupt interstate commerce.

The first provision of the RLA states: “It shall be the duty of all carriers, their officers, agents, and employees to exert every reasonable effort to make and maintain agreements concerning rates of pay, rules, and working conditions, and to settle all disputes, whether arising out of the application of such agreements or otherwise, in order to avoid any interruption to commerce or to the operation of any carrier growing out of any dispute between the carrier and the employees thereof.”

The seventh provision of the RLA states: “No carrier, its officers, or agents shall change the rates of pay, rules, or working conditions of its employees, as a class, as embodied in agreements except in the manner prescribed in such agreement or in §156 of this title.”

The Circuit Court wrote: “No party has pointed us to any case law addressing whether these sections provide for a private right of action by individual employees, nor have we identified any.” Lindsay v. Association of Professional Flight Attendants, 581 F.3d 47, 50 (2nd Cir. 2009).

The Court found that, consistent with U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the RLA does implicitly provide for a private civil cause of action by a union against an offending company. Id. at 51. The Court also noted that other Circuit Courts have found an implicit private cause of action for individual employees under the third and fourth provisions of the RLA, which prohibit carriers from discriminating against employees in connection with union organizing activities. Id.

The Court analyzed the congressional intent and history of the first and seventh provisions of the RLA, and applied the four-factor test set forth in Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. 66, 78 (1975) to assess whether Congress intended to create a private remedy in the first and seventh provisions of the RLA. The Court ultimately determined that “(b)ecause both provisions focus on the regulated parties, we discern no intent to confer privately enforceable rights.” Lindsay, 581 F.3d at 53.

The Court found that Congress “expressly contemplated that the RLA would be enforced through arbitral panels” and its “failure to provide similarly for private enforcement signals caution in inferring any such right of action.” Id. As a result, “[h]owever dissatisfied individual employees may be with these modifications to the 2001 [Collective Bargaining Agreement], allowing them to sue American Airlines under section 152, First to set aside a Restructuring Participation Agreement agreed to by their union representative and ratified by the union membership would risk the very disruption in commerce that the RLA seeks to avoid.” Id. at 55.

Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims. The Court then also agreed that the lower court was correct to dismiss the plaintiffs’ state law claims as preempted by the act, and in granting summary judgment for the union as well.

CONCLUSION

In these rough economic times, many companies are seeking to renegotiate union agreements in order to save money and avoid bankruptcy. The Lindsay decision is good news for employers seeking assurance that the renegotiated contracts entered into with a union and ratified by the union’s membership will stand, even if challenged by unhappy employees.

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Jeremy J. Gray

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