Before: Raggi, Hall, C.JJ, and Bianco, D.J.*
Plaintiffs, suing individually and on behalf of a putative class of flight attendants, challenge the validity of a Restructuring Participation Agreement reached between their former employer American Airlines and its parent AMR Corporation (collectively, the “corporate defendants”), and their union the Association of Professional Flight Attendants and its former president John Ward (collectively, the “union defendants”). Plaintiffs now appeal an award of summary judgment entered in the Eastern District of New York (Nina Gershon, Judge) in favor the corporate defendants on plaintiffs’ Railway Labor Act (“RLA”) and state law claims, and in favor of the union defendants on plaintiffs’ breach of the duty of fair representation claim. Plaintiffs’ appeal fails because (1) the relevant RLA provisions, 45 U.S.C. §152, First and Seventh, do not provide a private cause of action; (2) the RLA preempts their state law claims; and (3) plaintiffs failed to adduce sufficient evidence of a material factual dispute on their fair representation claim to defeat summary judgment.
AFFIRMED.
