Court strikes down Transit Union restrictive rule

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A federal court has strengthened the ban on union rules which prevent over 90% of members from running for union office. District Judge Joyce Hens Green in the District of Columbia has ordered the Amalgamated Transit Union to rerun part of its 1998 convention election of international officers because some locals applied meeting attendance rules in their election of convention delegates. ATU international officers are elected by delegates at conventions. The suit, challenging the election, was filed by the Labor Department. Paul Alan Levy represented the union complainants as intervenors.

The decision extends the limitation on meeting attendance rules significantly. Other federal courts greatly restricted such rules in local officer elections. This decision now applies also to the election of convention delegates if those delegates elect international officers. Moreover, it also applies even to the election of delegates from public employee locals which are affiliated to "mixed" national or international unions of both public and private employees.

The case arose in Chicago in 1998 when Richard Stomper, a member of ATU Local 241 and a train operator for Chicago Transit, was declared ineligible to run for convention delegate under the union’s meeting attendance rule which requires members to attend "six meetings in each of two years preceding and including the nomination meeting." Local 241 consists entirely of public employees who work for the City of Chicago. The ATU international union represents both public and private employees. Delegates elect international officers at triennial conventions. Stomper complained to the Department of Labor after the 1998 convention when he and others were disqualified for not satisfying the meeting attendance rule. The DOL investigated and then sued the local in district court seeking a rerun of the convention. The department noted that the rule effectively disqualified between 85% and 97% of the membership of various locals from running for convention delegate.

The district court applied to delegate elections the legal reasoning advanced in two earlier cases: the 1977 Supreme Court decision against the Steelworkers and the 1987 decision of the DC Appeals Court in the Doyle case, a suit brought by a member of the IBEW against the Labor Department. In Steelworkers, the Supreme Court held that a similar rule "hardly seems to be a ‘reasonable’ qualification consistent with the goal of free and democratic elections." In Doyle, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals strengthened and clarified the Supreme Court ruling, holding that there was a basis for the notion that "an attendance requirement that has a large antidemocratic effect can be reasonable on its face."

At this juncture, there is an important difference of opinion in the U.S. Appeals Courts. In the DC court, the test is whether any rule has an anti-democratic "effect." According to this standard, if an overwhelming portion of the membership is rendered ineligible, by that fact alone the rule is illegal

Two other Appeals Courts have interpreted such rules differently. One court has upheld a meeting attendance rule even though it disqualified over 90% because it was not "burdensome" for members to comply if they wished. A second Appeals Court, adopting the same "burdensome" standard, voided an attendance rule on the ground that it was indeed too burdensome.

Until the Supreme Court resolves differences among them--effect vs. burdensome--the law can be applied differently in each circuit. However, since most unions are headquartered in Washington DC, the more exacting standard of the DC court will apply, at least in national elections.