A flight attendant told the Supreme Court in a new filing that a federal appeals court ruling jeopardizes airline employees’ legal rights.
The Supreme Court docketed the flight attendant’s petition on April 23.
Petitioner Ali Bahreman, represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, is suing the respondents, Allegiant Air and the Transport Workers Union of America Local 577.
The Railway Labor Act, which covers labor-management relations in the railroad and airline sectors, permits union security provisions, which force workers in unionized workplaces to hand over union fees to keep their jobs.
The provision required that all flight attendants covered by the agreement had “to financially support the union by paying agency fees, or lose their use of seniority for bidding on flight assignments, work schedules, and other employments, all awarded in order of seniority,” the petition said.
Agency fees are what non-union members pay to cover the union’s expenses in representing them in the collective bargaining process and administering collective bargaining agreements.
Those who pay agency fees do not receive the same union-provided benefits as dues-paying union members.
Bidding refers to the process in which flight attendants indicate their work preferences.
For example, some may prefer short trips while others may want to work on longer flights.
They enter their preferences into a computer system, which then allocates work assignments while taking into account the attendants’ seniority and other factors.
Bahreman was not a TWU member and did not financially support the union while he worked as an Allegiant flight attendant, the petition said.
In 2019, Allegiant and the union suspended Bahreman’s bidding privileges because he hadn’t paid agency fees.
The airline ignored his seniority when it developed his work schedule, and he was no longer able to participate in bidding for contract benefits that took into account his seniority.
“Placing Bahreman at the bottom of the seniority list prevented him from using his contractual seniority to bid on more lucrative flight assignments, obtain valuable benefits to which he would have otherwise been entitled, and plan his work schedule,” the petition said.
In March 2020, Bahreman sued the airline and the union in federal district court in Nevada, arguing that the agency fee requirement violated the Railway Labor Act.
The petition said the act prohibits “influenc[ing] or coerc[ing] employees in an effort to induce them to join or remain … members of any labor organization,” with one exception.
The act allows unions and employers “to make agreements, requiring as a condition of continued employment, that … all employees shall become members of the labor organization representing their craft or class,” the petition said.
The union must also follow a duty of fair representation, which “require[s] the union … to represent non-union … members of the craft without hostile discrimination, fairly, impartially, and in good faith,” the Supreme Court ruled in Steele v. Louisville & N.R. Co. (1944), the petition said.
Bahreman argued that the agency fee requirement violated the act and discriminated against non-members of the union.
In August 2023, the district court dismissed the case, finding that the agency fee requirement was not a union security agreement because “it did not provide for termination as the consequence of not paying agency fees.”
The court also determined that the union had not violated the duty of fair representation by negotiating and enforcing the requirement, the petition said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed in December 2024.
The circuit court held that “compelling employees to financially support a union or lose their seniority benefits and work bidding privileges is not coercive,” and that the union had not violated the duty of fair representation because “it believed that the Agency Fee Requirement treated union members and non-members the same.”
The circuit court denied rehearing in January 2025, the petition said.
“The Ninth Circuit’s decision turns the U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘duty of fair representation’ on its head, and exposes the underlying constitutional tensions that the Court identified” in its 1944 ruling in Steele v. Louisville & N.R. Co.
“Originally created in Steele as a bulwark against union bosses wielding their monopoly representation and forced dues powers to discriminate, the Ninth Circuit’s reinterpretation of the [duty of fair representation] doctrine allows union officials to engage in discrimination to coerce fee payment from union dissidents.”
The Epoch Times contacted the airline and the union for comment but received no reply by publication time.
