Central Hardware Co. v. NLRB
Supreme Court of the United States
Central Hardware Co. v. National Labor Relations Board et al.
Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
No. 70-223. Argued: April 18, 1972 --- Decided: June 22, 1972
Petitioner had a rule against solicitational activities in its stores and parking lots. The parking lots are appurtenant to petitioner's free-standing stores and do not serve other retail establishments. Union organizers used petitioner's parking lots to solicit petitioner's employees to join the union, and petitioner ordered the organizers off its property. The union filed unfair labor practice charges against petitioner. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) held that enforcement of petitioner's no-solicitation rule, which it found was overly broad, violated § 8 (a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act, which proscribes interference with employees' § 7 organizational rights. The NLRB concluded that the character and use of the lots distinguished the case from NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U.S. 105, which required a "yielding" of the employer's property rights in the context of an organizational campaign only "when the inaccessibility of employees makes ineffective the reasonable attempts by nonemployees to communicate with them through the usual channels...." Id., at 112. Instead, the NLRB held applicable Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308, where peaceful picketing by union agents on a parking lot within a shopping center was held, under the circumstances existing, to be within the protection of the First Amendment. The Court of Appeals, agreeing, ordered enforcement of the NLRB's order.
Held: Logan Valley, decided on constitutional grounds, is not applicable to this § 7 case, which the Court of Appeals should now reconsider in the light of Babcock. Pp. 542-548.
439 F. 2d 1321, vacated and remanded.
POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and STEWART, WHITE, BLACKMUN, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which DOUGLAS and BRENNAN, JJ., joined, post, p. 548.
Ronald L. Aylward argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs was Keith E. Mattern.
Norton J. Come argued the cause for respondent National Labor Relations Board. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Griswold and Peter G. Nash. Bernard Dunau argued the cause for respondent Retail Clerks Union Local 725. With him on the brief was Carl L. Taylor.
Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed by Lawrence M. Cohen, Jerry Kronenberg, Gerard C. Smetana, and Alan Raywid for the American Retail Federation, and by Phil B. Hammond for Levitz Furniture Corp.
J. Albert Woll, Laurence Gold, and Thomas E. Harris filed a brief for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations as amicus curiae urging affirmance.