## Facts

- Naomi Marquez, a part-time actress, sought work on a television production by Lakeside Productions.
- Lakeside and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) were parties to a collective-bargaining agreement containing a union-security clause tracking NLRA § 8(a)(3) language requiring “membership” as a condition of employment after a 30-day period.
- The clause used “membership in good standing” and referenced payment of initiation fees and periodic dues, but did not state that “membership” can be satisfied by paying required fees and dues rather than full union membership, and did not state limits on charging objectors for nonrepresentational activities.
- The clause treated the 30-day grace period as running from an employee’s first employment in the motion picture industry rather than restarting with each new job.
- SAG informed Lakeside that Marquez, having worked previously in the industry beyond 30 days, had to pay before performing; when she did not pay by the filming date, Lakeside replaced her.
- Marquez sued SAG and Lakeside, alleging (among other claims) that SAG breached its duty of fair representation by negotiating and enforcing the clause and by adopting an unlawful grace-period interpretation.

## Issues

1. Whether a union breaches its duty of fair representation by negotiating a union-security clause that tracks NLRA § 8(a)(3)’s “membership” language without stating judicial limitations on that term.
2. Whether a claim challenging a union-security clause’s 30-day grace-period interpretation as unlawful under NLRA § 8(a)(3) is for the courts or within the National Labor Relations Board’s primary jurisdiction.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed.
- SAG did not breach the duty of fair representation merely by negotiating a union-security clause that uses statutory language derived from NLRA § 8(a)(3) without incorporating judicial interpretations into the contract text.
- The challenge to the clause’s grace-period interpretation was, in substance, an NLRA legality claim within the NLRB’s primary jurisdiction, not a matter for initial judicial resolution as a fair-representation suit.
- The Court emphasized the narrowness of its holding: the facial use of statutory language is not itself a breach; separate claims based on misleading or bad-faith implementation were not resolved by this decision.

## Legal Principles

- A union breaches the duty of fair representation only by conduct that is arbitrary, discriminatory, or in bad faith.
- Mere incorporation of statutory language in a collective-bargaining provision, without more, does not satisfy the arbitrariness or bad-faith threshold required for a duty-of-fair-representation violation.
- Unions are not required, as a matter of the duty of fair representation, to embed all judicial gloss on NLRA terms into collective-bargaining agreement text.
- Claims asserting that a union-security clause substantively violates NLRA § 8(a)(3) generally fall within the NLRB’s primary jurisdiction.
- The duty of fair representation may still be implicated by a union’s deceptive or misleading use of a union-security clause in its communications or enforcement, but that question is distinct from the clause’s facial drafting.

## Conclusion

The Court held that a union does not violate its duty of fair representation simply by using NLRA § 8(a)(3)’s “membership” wording in a union-security clause without restating judicial limitations, and it confirmed that challenges asserting the clause is unlawful under the NLRA—such as the grace-period dispute—belong first before the NLRB.


Marquez v. Screen Actors Guild, Inc., 525 U.S. 33 (1998)