## Facts

- Minnesota enacted Minn. Stat. § 179.12(9), making it an unfair labor practice for an employer to hire, or threaten to hire, permanent replacement workers during a strike or lockout.
- Employers Association, Inc., a multi-employer bargaining association representing over 1,250 Minnesota employers, engaged in collective bargaining with unions including the United Steelworkers of America (USWA).
- The Association asserted that federal labor law permits employers to hire permanent replacements during an economic strike and that the Minnesota statute deterred and constrained its bargaining options.
- USWA argued there was no ripe dispute because no strike was occurring and the Association had not taken concrete steps to hire permanent replacements.
- Related litigation challenging the same Minnesota statute was pending in state court.

## Issues

1. Whether a pre-enforcement challenge to Minn. Stat. § 179.12(9) presented a ripe Article III case or controversy for declaratory relief.
2. Whether the federal court should abstain from deciding federal labor-law preemption due to parallel state-court proceedings involving the statute.
3. Whether Minn. Stat. § 179.12(9) was preempted by the National Labor Relations Act and therefore invalid under the Supremacy Clause.

## Decision

- The court held the dispute was ripe because the challenge raised primarily legal questions and the statute had an immediate effect on the Association’s bargaining posture.
- The court declined to abstain, concluding no special circumstances justified withholding federal jurisdiction over the preemption claim.
- The court granted summary judgment for the Association and declared Minn. Stat. § 179.12(9) unconstitutional as preempted by federal labor law.

## Legal Principles

- Pre-enforcement declaratory relief is available when a statute creates a real and immediate impact on regulated parties, the issues are fit for judicial resolution, and withholding review would impose hardship.
- Federal courts generally must exercise jurisdiction; abstention is disfavored absent recognized grounds (e.g., unclear state law requiring authoritative construction or exceptional state administrative concerns).
- Under NLRA preemption, a state may not regulate conduct that Congress intended to leave to the free play of economic forces in collective bargaining (Machinists preemption), including economic weapons permitted by federal labor policy.
- A state law that removes or materially restricts an economic weapon recognized under federal labor law may be preempted because it obstructs Congress’s chosen balance of bargaining power.

## Conclusion

The district court treated the challenge to Minnesota’s striker-replacement prohibition as a ripe, justiciable pre-enforcement dispute, refused to abstain despite parallel state litigation, and held the statute NLRA-preempted and invalid under the Supremacy Clause because it restricted an economic weapon federal labor law leaves to collective bargaining.


Employers Ass'n, Inc. v. United Steelworkers of Am., 803 F. Supp. 1558 (D. Minn. 1992)