Chamber of Commerce v. Brown, 554 U.S. 60 (2008)
holds that noncoercive labor speech is protected by the
NLRA, and any state statute that interferes with such
protected speech is preempted. Prior to the enactment
of California's SB 954 in 2017, Interpipe, through its
Industry Advancement Fund ("IAF"), lobbied against
Project Labor Agreements ("PLAs"), which are pre-hire
collective bargaining agreements imposed "top down" on
employees without their vote or consent. In contrast to
Interpipe's advocacy against PLAs, unions and IAF's that
are funded by unionized employers lobby in favor of PLAs.

Interpipe and other open shop contractors made
contributions to their IAF, ABC-CCC, from 2005 through
2016. In 2017, SB 954 changed California's prevailing
wage laws to eliminate prevailing wage credits for
contributions to IAF's unless they are required by a
collective bargaining agreement. This effectively
eliminated all of ABC-CCC's funding and silenced its
advocacy against PLAs. Union funded advocacy in
favor of PLAs is unchanged under SB 954.

The two issues presented by Interpipe include:

1. Does protected labor speech under Chamber
of Commerce v. Brown include advocacy opposing
"top down" union organizing campaigns that seek
to impose project labor agreements (PLAs), thus
providing a legal basis for Interpipe's "as applied"
NLRA preemption challenge to SB 954?

2. If Interpipe's advocacy against PLAs is
protected labor speech under Brown, does the Court's
"minimum labor standards" exception to NLRA
preemption under Metropolitan Life v. Massachusetts
override that NLRA protection so as to warrant the
dismissal of Interpipe's NLRA preemption claim?

Advocacy opposing 'top down' union organizing campaigns that seek to impose project labor agreements (PLAs)