The United States Supreme Court Tuesday heard oral arguments in a case that will decide whether the National Labor Relations Board or state courts should handle tort claims arising from strike action. The court’s forthcoming decision in Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters could overrule its 1959 ruling in San Diego Building Trades v. Garmon, which held that companies cannot sue unions in state courts for strike-related activity.

The Glacier Northwest case centers on a labor dispute between striking truck drivers and their employer, a company that provides pre-mixed concrete for construction projects. The employer, Glacier Northwest, is asking the court to overturn or water down the precedent established in Garmon, which protects unions from lawsuits while exercising the right to strike given to them in the National Labor Relations Act. Glacier Northwest is asking the court for this decision so they may proceed with a lawsuit against the truck drivers for the alleged intentional destruction of company property that occurred during the strike action.

In oral arguments, the court’s three-seat liberal bloc did most of the questioning. However, preemption, the legal theory that federal law supersedes state law, proved central to the line of questioning from all of the justices as the theory was key to the court’s Garmon decision. Secondary to the preemption issue, the parties before the court have asked it to decide whether a work stoppage that is reasonably foreseen to cause the destruction of property can be considered an intentional destruction of company property.

While many legal experts expect the court to issue a narrower ruling, the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court has overturned longstanding legal precedent before, most notably in their June 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Noel Fransisco, partner-in-charge for Washington for the law firm Jones Day and a former Solicitor General under President Trump, served as the counsel of record for Glacier Northwest. Darin Dalmat, partner at the labor-law firm Barnard Iglitzen & Lavitt LLP, served as the counsel of record for the labor union. Vivek Suri, representing the US Office of the Solicitor General, also spoke before the court in support of neither party.