The Texas Supreme Court has affirmed a Dallas Court of Appeals’ decision holding that the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA)(45 USC § 151a) does not pre-empt a pilots association’s suit against Boeing in a dispute over the pilots’ agreement to fly the 737 MAX aircraft.
The Boeing Company v. Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) On Behalf of Itself and its Members (No. 22-0631; June 20, 2025) arose from litigation brought by SWAPA against Boeing alleging tortious interference, fraud, and negligence in connection with SWAPA’s 2016 collective bargaining agreement with Southwest Airlines. Under that agreement, SWAPA agreed on its members’ behalf to fly the 737 MAX. Shortly thereafter, two MAX crashes, attributed to a new flight-stabilizing feature on which pilots had not been trained, killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The Association filed suit in state court (after first nonsuiting a federal lawsuit). Boeing argued that the RLA pre-empted the claims and that, regardless of that, SWAPA lacked standing to sue on the pilots’ behalf. The trial court dismissed SWAPA’s claims. On appeal, the Dallas Court of Appeals affirmed in part and reversed and remanded in part. Boeing sought review. After first declining review, SCOTX granted rehearing.
In an opinion by Justice Boyd, SCOTX affirmed. Boeing argued that the court of appeals got it wrong by failing to follow SCOTUS’s ruling in Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. v. Norris, 512 U.S. 246, 261 (1994), which held that “where the resolution of a state-law claim depends on an interpretation of [a] CBA, the claim is pre-empted.” The court of appeals sidestepped the ruling by holding that since Boeing was a non-signatory to the agreement, pre-emption did not apply. A second question in the appeal was whether SWAPA had standing to sue Boeing under § 252.007(b)(3), which provides that a membership association such as SWAPA may assert claims on behalf of its members only if “neither the claim asserted nor relief requested requires the participation of a member.” Boeing argues that SWAPA attempted to evade this provision by executing an assignment of its members’ claims, a move the court of appeals seemed to accept. Regardless of the assignment, Boeing asserts, a trial will still require individual SWAPA members to testify as to their (potentially divergent) interests.
SCOTX agreed that the RLA doesn’t pre-empt SWAPA’s claims but for a different reason. Rejecting Boeing’s argument that the RLA expressly pre-empts the claims, Justice Boyd observed that SCOTUS “has construed the Act’s preemptive effect to be ‘virtually identical’ to that of the federal Labor Management Relations Act” (citations omitted). The LMRA “preempt[s] state-law claims that require interpretation of a [collective bargaining agreement] because the ‘possibility that individual contract terms might have different meanings under state and federal law would inevitably exert a disruptive influence upon the negotiation and administration of collective agreements” (citations omitted). In this case, by contrast, SWAPA’s claims are not preempted because they can be resolved “independent of any negotiated labor agreement” because they assert fraudulent and negligent misrepresentation, as well as tortious interference with SWAPA’s relationship with Southwest. The resolution of these tort claims do “not substantially depend[] upon analysis of the terms of” the CBA at issue in the case. Whether Boeing actually committed the alleged conduct must be decided by a trier of fact.
SCOTX further rejected Boeing’s argument that the trial court should not have recognized individual pilots’ assignment of claim to SWAPA for prosecution in this case. The Court saw “no reason to conclude that the pilots’ assignments run afoul of public policy” (citations omitted). Whether and how “SWAPA can pursue and try the thousands of individual claims its members assigned to” it is another question, and “to prevail on any individual pilot’s claim, SWAPA must establish that the pilot suffered an ‘injury in fact’ as a result of Boeing’s alleged wrongful conduct.” [It’s unclear whether anybody actually suffered pecuniary damages in the whole affair, though the pilots allege millions of dollars in lost compensation resulting from the grounding of the MAX.] And because SWAPA waived its assertion of associational standing and did not seek class certification, it will have to prove up every one of the thousands of individual claims assigned to it.
Justice Bland, joined by Justice Huddle, dissented in part. She would have held that § 252.007, Business Organizations Code, should be applied to bar SWAPA’s right to pursue claims on behalf of individual members because the lawsuit will require the members’ participation to prove up compenatory damages. More specifically, Justice Bland observed, each pilot’s (lost) compensation would depend on his or her individual flight schedules, salaries, and tax records. This “fact-intensive-individual-inquiry” is precisely what § 252.007, which bars associational standing if “neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of a member,” was designed to prevent. Put another way, SWAPA should not be permitted to evade § 252.007 by taking the assignments in the first place.
If this matter goes forward in the trial court, it is very hard to see how the court will be able to structure fact-finding on 8,000 individual claims for lost compensation. The majority alluded to that problem but chose to let it alone. As to Justice Bland’s argument about § 252.007, the majority stated that the statute did not prohibit a member from assigning its claim to the association “although it certainly could have done so.”
