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Opinion of the Court.

Mr. Louis B. Boudin for petitioners.

320 U.S.

Mr. Abraham Michael Katz submitted for respondents. MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

We brought these two cases here to determine whether injunctions sanctioned by the New York Court of Appeals exceeded the bounds within which the Fourteenth Amendment confines state power. 319 U. S. 778. They were argued together and, being substantially alike, can be disposed of in a single opinion.

We start with the Court of Appeals' view of the facts. In No. 36, petitioners, a labor union and its president, picketed a cafeteria in an attempt to organize it. The cafeteria was owned by the respondents, who themselves conducted the business without the aid of any employees. Picketing was carried on by a parade of one person at a time in front of the premises. The successive pickets were "at all times orderly and peaceful." They carried signs which tended to give the impression that the respondents were "unfair" to organized labor and that the pickets had been previously employed in the cafeteria. These representations were treated by the court below as knowingly false in that there had been no employees in the cafeteria and the respondents were "not unfair to organized labor." It also found that pickets told prospective customers that the cafeteria served bad food, and that by "patronizing" it "they were aiding the cause of Fascism."

The circumstances in No. 37 differ from those in No. 36 only in that pickets were found to have told prospective customers that a strike was in progress and to have "insulted customers . . . who were about to enter" the cafeteria. Upon a finding that respondents required equitable relief to avoid irreparable damages and that there was no "labor dispute" under the New York analogue

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of the Norris-La Guardia Act (§ 876-a of the New York Civil Practice Act), the trial court enjoined petitioners in broad terms from picketing at or near respondents' places of business. The decrees were affirmed by the Appellate Division (264 App. Div. 708, 34 N. Y. S. 2d 408), and were finally sustained by the Court of Appeals, its Chief Judge and two Judges dissenting. 289 N. Y. 498, 507, 46 N. E. 2d 903.

In Senn v. Tile Layers Union, 301 U. S. 468, this Court ruled that members of a union might, "without special statutory authorization by a State, make known the facts of a labor dispute, for freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Federal Constitution." 301 U. S. at 478. Later cases applied the Senn doctrine by enforcing the right of workers to state their case and to appeal for public support in an orderly and peaceful manner regardless of the area of immunity as defined by state policy. A. F. of L. v. Swing, 312 U. S. 321; Bakery Drivers Local v. Wohl, 315 U. S. 769. To be sure, the Senn case related to the employment of "peaceful picketing and truthful publicity." 301 U. S. at 482. That the picketing under review was peaceful is not questioned. And to use loose language or undefined slogans that are part of the conventional give-andtake in our economic and political controversies—like "unfair" or "fascist"-is not to falsify facts. In a setting like the present, continuing representations unquestionably false and acts of coercion going beyond the mere influence exerted by the fact of picketing, are of course not constitutional prerogatives. But here we have no attempt by the state through its courts to restrict conduct justifiably found to be an abusive exercise of the right to picket. We have before us a prohibition as unrestricted as that which we found to transgress state power in A. F. of L. v. Swing, supra. The Court here, as in the Swing case, was probably led into error by assuming that if a controversy does not come within the scope of state legislation limit

Opinion of the Court.

320 U.S.

ing the issue of injunctions, efforts to make known one side of an industrial controversy by peaceful means may be enjoined. But, as we have heretofore decided, a state cannot exclude working men in a particular industry from putting their case to the public in a peaceful way “by drawing the circle of economic competition between employers and workers so small as to contain only an employer and those directly employed by him." A. F. of L. v. Swing, 312 U. S. at 326.

The present situation is thus wholly outside the scope of the decision in Milk Wagon Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Co., 312 U. S. 287. There we sustained the equity power of a state because the record disclosed abuses deemed not episodic and isolated but of the very texture and process of the enjoined picketing. But we also made clear "that the power to deny what otherwise would be lawful picketing derives from the power of the states to prevent future coercion. Right to free speech in the future cannot be forfeited because of dissociated acts of past violence." 312 U. S. at 296. Still less can the right to picket itself be taken away merely because there may have been isolated incidents of abuse falling far short of violence occurring in the course of that picketing.

The judgments must be reversed and the causes returned to the state court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

Reversed.

Syllabus.

SWITCHMEN'S UNION OF NORTH AMERICA ET AL. v. NATIONAL MEDIATION BOARD ET AL.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

No. 48. Argued October 15, 1943.-Decided November 22, 1943. A dispute having arisen between two labor organizations as to representation of employees of a carrier for collective bargaining, the services of the National Mediation Board were invoked pursuant to § 2, Ninth of the Railway Labor Act. One of the organizations sought to be the representative of all yardmen; the other, to be the representative of certain smaller groups. The Board directed an election, designating all yardmen as participants. The first organization was chosen representative, and the Board certified the result to the carrier. The second organization and some of its members brought suit in the federal District Court, challenging the Board's determination as to participants in the election and seeking cancellation of the certificate. Held that the District Court was without jurisdiction to review the action of the Board in issuing the certificate. P. 300.

1. The language of the Railway Labor Act and the legislative history of § 2, Ninth thereof support the conclusion that the intent of Congress was that the Board's certification of representatives for collective bargaining should not be judicially reviewable. P. 306.

(a) Constitutional questions aside, it is for Congress to determine how the rights which it creates shall be enforced. P. 301. (b) Where Congress has not expressly authorized judicial review, the type of problem involved and the history of the statute in question are relevant in determining whether judicial review may nonetheless be supplied. P. 301.

2. The broad grant to the federal district courts, by Jud. Code § 24 (8), of original jurisdiction of all "suits and proceedings arising under any law regulating commerce," can not sustain jurisdiction in this case. P. 300.

3. That the Board's certification of representatives of employees for collective bargaining is conclusive does not of itself make such certification judicially reviewable. P. 303.

4. Shields v. Utah Idaho Central R. Co., 305 U. S. 177, distinguished. P. 306.

135 F.2d 785, reversed.

Opinion of the Court.

320 U.S.

CERTIORARI, 319 U. S. 736, to review the affirmance of a judgment dismissing the complaint in a suit challenging the action of the National Mediation Board in certifying representatives for collective bargaining.

Mr. Donald R. Richberg, with whom Mr. Rufus G. Poole was on the brief, for petitioners.

Mr. Robert L. Stern, with whom Solicitor General Fahy was on the brief, for the National Mediation Board et al.; and Mr. Bernard M. Savage, with whom Mr. Alfred L. Bennett was on the brief, for the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen,-respondents.

MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is an action by the petitioners, the Switchmen's Union of North America and some of its members against the National Mediation Board, its members, the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, and the New York Central Railroad Company and the Michigan Central Railroad Company. The individual plaintiffs are members and officials of the Switchmen's Union and employees of the respondent carriers.

Petitioners were plaintiffs in the District Court. A certification of representatives for collective bargaining under § 2, Ninth of the Railway Labor Act (44 Stat. 577, 48 Stat. 1185) was made by the Board to the carriers.1

1 Sec. 2, Ninth provides: "If any dispute shall arise among a carrier's employees as to who are the representatives of such employees designated and authorized in accordance with the requirements of this Act, it shall be the duty of the Mediation Board, upon request of either party to the dispute, to investigate such dispute and to certify to both parties, in writing, within thirty days after the receipt of the invocation of its services, the name or names of the individuals or organizations that have been designated and authorized to represent the employees involved in the dispute, and certify the same to the carrier. Upon receipt of such

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