## Facts

- Cintas Corporation distributed an employee handbook to its workforce that included a “Cintas Culture” confidentiality statement.
- The handbook stated the company would “recognize and protect the confidentiality of any information concerning the company, its business plans, its partners, new business efforts, customers, accounting and financial matters.”
- A “Discipline Policy” warned employees they could be sanctioned for “violating a confidence or [for the] unauthorized release of confidential information.”
- UNITE HERE filed an unfair labor practice charge alleging the confidentiality language unlawfully chilled employees’ NLRA § 7 rights to discuss wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment.
- The NLRB’s General Counsel issued a complaint focusing on the rule’s prohibition against disclosure of “any information concerning … partners.”

## Issues

1. Whether Cintas’s confidentiality rule violated NLRA § 8(a)(1) because employees would reasonably construe it to prohibit § 7-protected discussions, even though the rule did not expressly mention such activity.
2. Whether the lack of evidence that employees actually interpreted the rule to restrict § 7 activity, or that Cintas enforced the rule against § 7 activity, barred an unfair labor practice finding.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit denied Cintas’s petition for review and granted the NLRB’s cross-application for enforcement.
- The court upheld the Board’s determination that the confidentiality rule violated § 8(a)(1) under the Lutheran Heritage “reasonable employee” standard.
- The court agreed that the breadth of “any information concerning … partners,” paired with the disciplinary warning, could reasonably be read to cover wages and other employment terms.
- The court held the Board could find a violation based on maintaining an overbroad rule without proof of actual enforcement or actual chilling of protected activity.
- The court deferred to the Board’s application of the Act, concluding the Board’s decision was supported by substantial evidence.

## Legal Principles

- An employer violates NLRA § 8(a)(1) by maintaining a workplace rule that employees would reasonably construe as prohibiting § 7 activity, even if the rule is facially neutral.
- Under Lutheran Heritage, a rule can be unlawful even if it does not explicitly reference § 7 activity and even if there is no evidence of enforcement or actual restraint.
- Employees’ § 7 rights include the right to communicate with one another about self-organization and workplace terms and conditions.
- Courts generally defer to the NLRB’s reasonable interpretation and application of §§ 7 and 8(a)(1) when supported by substantial evidence.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit enforced the NLRB’s order finding Cintas’s confidentiality provisions unlawfully overbroad because a reasonable employee could interpret the policy’s sweeping ban on disclosure of information about “partners” as restricting protected discussions about wages and other employment conditions, even absent proof of enforcement or actual chilling.


Cintas Corp. v. NLRB, 482 F.3d 463 (D.C. Cir. 2007)