United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2018-07-06
29usc158: author: Astra4 · QA: PASS (QA2, neov2/qa/wave2-cases-QA2-crosscheck.md)
Case and law context
Role: applied; posture: Employer petition challenging Board order against its blanket button prohibition; court enforces order after examining public-image and safety justifications.; result: claimant-won; claim: (a)
Uncertainty
None recorded
Misfit
The same uniform rule presents separate public-image and food-safety defenses. This annotation preserves the opinion’s 2018 doctrinal setting, not a prediction about later Board insignia policy.
Result is from the perspective of the General Counsel or charging party asserting the employer unfair labor practice, not from the employer-petitioner’s appellate position.
B · Case × element grid
Top-level elements follow claim order in panels of up to six elements. Case rows repeat across panels. Every recorded block retains its holding and basis; multiple blocks are not merged into a case-level verdict. ✓ satisfied · ✗ not satisfied · ○ not reached · · not addressed. Muted blocks are not counted. Sub-element evidence remains on case and element pages.
Elements 1–6 of 17
| Case | Covered employer | Covered employee and applicable retained status | Section 7 protected rights | Interference, restraint or coercion | Noncoercive expression under §8(c) | Narrow insignia-restriction justification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-N-Out Burger, Inc. v. Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. — 894 F.3d 707 (2018) · United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2018 (29usc158: author: Astra4 · QA: PASS (QA2, neov2/qa/wave2-cases-QA2-crosscheck.md)) | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed |
Elements 7–12 of 17
| Case | Domination, interference or support of a labor organization | Working-hours conference proviso | Conditional building-and-construction agreement allowance | Employment discrimination | Union-related discriminatory motivation | Same action absent unlawful motive |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-N-Out Burger, Inc. v. Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. — 894 F.3d 707 (2018) · United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2018 (29usc158: author: Astra4 · QA: PASS (QA2, neov2/qa/wave2-cases-QA2-crosscheck.md)) | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed |
Elements 13–17 of 17
| Case | Conditional union-security proviso | Filed charges or given testimony | Discharge or other discrimination for Board participation | Employees collective-bargaining representative | Alternative breaches of applicable collective-bargaining duties |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-N-Out Burger, Inc. v. Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. — 894 F.3d 707 (2018) · United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2018 (29usc158: author: Astra4 · QA: PASS (QA2, neov2/qa/wave2-cases-QA2-crosscheck.md)) | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed |
Instances and excluded annotation blocks
| Case | Element | Holding and scope | Pattern | Exact source quotations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-N-Out Burger, Inc. v. Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. — 894 F.3d 707 (2018) · United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2018 — satisfied · law (29usc158: author: Astra4 · QA: PASS (QA2, neov2/qa/wave2-cases-QA2-crosscheck.md)) | Interference, restraint or coercion | satisfied Counted merits instance applied / merits basis: law; claim: (a); party: Crowder and other employees; subject: party=Crowder and other employees The undisputed rule restricts protected wage-campaign insignia; the company bears the separate special-circumstances issue. | insignia/blanket-uniform-adornment-ban | Palmini then told Crowder that he could not add anything to the uniform and instructed Crowder to remove the button.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_894.jsonl#/f3d/894/0707-01; Unicode character offsets [2691:2807] (end exclusive); SHA-256 bd560224f746993dcd4e042a295f5c227d57ddf21054da489a9121796d4599e9.By prohibiting employees from "[w]earing any type of pin or stickers," In-N-Out's rule restricts its employees' Section 7 rights and is therefore presumptively unlawful.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_894.jsonl#/f3d/894/0707-01; Unicode character offsets [14284:14453] (end exclusive); SHA-256 bd560224f746993dcd4e042a295f5c227d57ddf21054da489a9121796d4599e9. |
| In-N-Out Burger, Inc. v. Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. — 894 F.3d 707 (2018) · United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2018 — not · no-evidence (29usc158: author: Astra4 · QA: PASS (QA2, neov2/qa/wave2-cases-QA2-crosscheck.md)) | Narrow insignia-restriction justification | not Counted merits instance applied / merits basis: no-evidence; claim: (a); theory: public-image and food-safety justifications; subject: theory=public-image and food-safety justifications The Board’s rejection of employer evidence is upheld. Both company-required larger buttons and lack of tailoring undermine the asserted justification; absence of proven actual harm is not itself decisive. | image-and-safety/non-speculative-tailoring-absent | The Christmas and In-N-Out Foundation buttons are approximately three times larger in diameter than the "Fight for $15" buttons.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_894.jsonl#/f3d/894/0707-01; Unicode character offsets [3641:3769] (end exclusive); SHA-256 bd560224f746993dcd4e042a295f5c227d57ddf21054da489a9121796d4599e9.Under Board law, an employer need not show "actual harm" in order to establish "special circumstances," but it must put forth specific, non-speculative evidence of the adverse effects it claims justify its restriction.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_894.jsonl#/f3d/894/0707-01; Unicode character offsets [19690:19908] (end exclusive); SHA-256 bd560224f746993dcd4e042a295f5c227d57ddf21054da489a9121796d4599e9.We uphold the Board's reasonable conclusion that In-N-Out failed to establish a "special circumstances" defense based on its "public image" interest.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_894.jsonl#/f3d/894/0707-01; Unicode character offsets [24270:24419] (end exclusive); SHA-256 bd560224f746993dcd4e042a295f5c227d57ddf21054da489a9121796d4599e9.The Board also noted that In-N-Out's managers did not make "any effort to examine" the "Fight for $15" buttons for safety issues before restricting employees from wearing them, which indicates that the company's food safety argument is a "post hoc invention[ ]."Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_894.jsonl#/f3d/894/0707-01; Unicode character offsets [25724:25986] (end exclusive); SHA-256 bd560224f746993dcd4e042a295f5c227d57ddf21054da489a9121796d4599e9. |
Court interpretations recorded from this case
interpretation
Conjecture, conclusory assertions, and generalizations do not suffice under this standard.
In-N-Out Burger, Inc. v. Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. — 894 F.3d 707 (2018) · United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2018 (29usc158: author: Astra4 · QA: PASS (QA2, neov2/qa/wave2-cases-QA2-crosscheck.md))
Conjecture, conclusory assertions, and generalizations do not suffice under this standard.Source:
docroot/ir/caselaw/f3d_894.jsonl#/f3d/894/0707-01; Unicode character offsets [12405:12495] (end exclusive); SHA-256 bd560224f746993dcd4e042a295f5c227d57ddf21054da489a9121796d4599e9.Judge/Board-made qualification to the employee insignia variant in In-N-Out (Fifth Circuit, 2018); not a universal defense. Public image and food safety were insufficient on that record.