Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—8th Cir.: Employee’s discrimination claims preempted because they are dependent upon interpretation of CBA, (Sep 26, 2025)

By Ronald Miller, J.D.

Section 301 of the LMRA, which governs lawsuits to enforce collective-bargaining agreements, is one of the few statutes that completely preempts state claims.

A federal district court properly denied an employee’s motion to remand to state court his claim alleging that UPS discriminated against him on the basis of race and age after it disciplined him for tactics to avoid Saturday work, ruled the Sixth Circuit. The district court also granted UPS’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. Affirming both decisions of the district court, the appeals court concluded that his state law claims were preempted by Section 301 of the LMRA, because an interpretation of the CBA was necessary to determine the employee was required to work on weekends. Similarly, the employee’s retaliation claim failed because there was no adverse employment action taken against him (King v. United Parcel Service, Inc., No. 24-1859 (8th Cir. Sept. 25, 2025)).

Weekend work. The employee believed that UPS hired him to be a Monday-to-Friday driver but then pulled a bait-and-switch by having him drive on Tuesdays through Saturdays instead. He did not want to work on Saturdays, so he repeatedly tried to get out of it. For a while, his strategy was to maximize his weekday hours to avoid weekend deliveries. Other times, he asked coworkers to trade shifts or split routes. Some Saturdays he just called in sick.

Eventually, UPS disciplined him in various ways, from writing him up to having a supervisor ride along on deliveries. The company even fired him more than once, only for the union to get his job back.

The employee accused UPS of race and age discrimination, the creation of a hostile work environment, and retaliation. He alleged that the employer let younger, white employees avoid Saturday shifts and did not discipline them as harshly for similar misconduct. He filed the suit in state court under the Iowa Civil Rights Act.

LMRA preemption. After UPS removed the action to federal court, it asserted that the LMRA completely preempted the employee’s state-law claims. It argued that deciding his claims would require an interpretation of the company’s collective-bargaining agreement, which necessarily raised a federal question and wholly displaced his state-law claims, even though he had cut the references to it in his amended complaint. The district court refused to remand the case to state court. Thereafter, the district court granted UPS’s motion for judgment on the pleadings.

Jurisdiction. “The central issue on appeal is whether this case belongs in federal court,” said the court. The employee argued that federal jurisdiction was absent because he filed state-law claims against UPS and there was no diversity of citizenship. However, federal jurisdiction over at least one of his claims would support supplemental jurisdiction over the others.

Some federal statutes completely preempt—and thereby “wholly displace”—state-law claims, meaning that one “which comes within the scope of that cause of action, even if pleaded in terms of state law, is in reality based on federal law. Complete preemption is rare and arises under only a limited number of federal statutes,” explained the court.

Section 301 of the LMRA, which governs lawsuits to enforce collective-bargaining agreements, is one of them. But only for “claims founded directly on rights created by collective-bargaining agreements” or “claims substantially dependent on analysis of” them. Here, it was undisputed that the employee’s claims were “founded” on rights created by state law, not the collective-bargaining agreement, so the only way federal jurisdiction exists is if they are “substantially dependent on analysis of” it.

A substantially dependent claim under the LMRA is one that “require[s] the interpretation of some specific provision of” a collective-bargaining agreement. The proper starting point for determining whether interpretation of a [collective-bargaining agreement] is required... is an examination of the [state-law] claim[s] [themselves],” said the court.

Discrimination claims. The employee’s first claim alleged race and age discrimination under the Iowa Civil Rights Act. To succeed, he had to establish that UPS acted with “discriminatory intent,” meaning that race or age “actually played a role in [UPS’s] decision[-]making process and had a determinative influence on the outcome.” Because the employee offered no direct evidence, he had to prove his case circumstantially under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework.

Prima facie case. Here, the prima facie case presented an insurmountable legal barrier for the employee. For the burden to shift to UPS, “the circumstances” surrounding the company’s insistence that he work Saturdays had to “raise[] an inference of discrimination.” Key to that determination was whether the collective-bargaining agreement placed him in a category of employees who had to work weekends.

Interpretation of CBA. While the CBA says that “full-time package car drivers” will be “protect[ed]... from being scheduled or forced to perform weekend delivery work,” combination drivers” work “five (5) consecutive day schedule[s] of Tuesday through Saturday or Wednesday through Sunday.” If the employee falls in the category as a combination driver, then working Saturdays is part of the job, not something that arose out of race or age discrimination. The same goes for the discipline that he received for splitting routes, shirking his Saturday driving duties, and not following directions.

In short, the employee’s race-and-age-discrimination claim was “substantially dependent on analysis of [the] collective-bargaining agreement.” Thus, there were consequences regarding jurisdiction and on the merits. First, “the case belongs in federal court.” Second, the claim “must either be treated as a § 301 claim or dismissed as pre-empted.” Because the employee refused to litigate this case under Section 301, it was subject to dismissal.

HWE claim. The employee’s hostile-work-environment claim had similar problems. To prevail, he had to prove that “(1) he... belongs to a protected group; (2) he... was subjected to unwelcome harassment; (3) the harassment was based on a protected characteristic; and (4) the harassment affected a term, condition, or privilege of employment.” Here, the fourth element triggered preemption.

The only way to figure out whether UPS altered any term or condition of employment was by interpreting the CBA, including its just-cause standard. If the employee was a combination driver, then disciplining him for shirking his weekend duties was not “abusive.” Because this claim depended on what the CBA says, it was another casualty of complete preemption.

Retaliation claim. To adequately plead statutory retaliation, the employee needed to allege facts showing: “(1) that he... engaged in [a] statutorily protected activit[y]; (2) an adverse employment action was taken against him... ; and (3) a causal connection exists between the two events.” Although his filing with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission qualified as a statutorily protected activity, the complaint did not plausibly connect it to an adverse employment action.

The only real possibility was a written warning he received for taking an improper lunch break. A warning, however, is not an adverse employment action, at least in Iowa. With no facts plausibly supporting two of the three elements of the employee’s statutory retaliation claim, it was doomed to fail.

The case is No. 24-1859.

Judge: Stras, D.

Attorneys: John Q. Stoltze (Stoltze Law Group) for Brandon King. Delilah Evans (Schmoyer Reinhard) for United Parcel Service, Inc., Shane Sipiorski and Lance King.

Companies: United Parcel Service, Inc.

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