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Limiting Section 301 Preemption: Three Cheers For The Trilogy, Only One For Lingle And Lueck, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

After Lueck the preemption of state law claims by employees covered by collective bargaining agreements seemed to spread.²⁶ Lingle partially stemmed the flow, ²⁷ but the lower courts continue to deny significant state law rights to unionized employees in the name of section 301 and the arbitration process that it has encouraged. ²⁸ Many of these lower court decisions paint a much too broad swath of section 301 preemption through the range of employment rights now being made available by state law.

The fault, I suggest, lies with the preemption test suggested in Lueck and expressly articulated in Lingle …