Railway Labor Act Preemption and Mass Claim Assignments: Commentary on The Boeing Company v. Southwest Airlines Pilots Association

I. Introduction

The Supreme Court of Texas’s decision in The Boeing Company v. Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), opinion delivered June 20, 2025, sits at the intersection of federal labor preemption doctrine, state tort law, and Texas rules on the assignment of claims. Although the litigation arises from the widely publicized Boeing 737 MAX crashes, the opinion’s enduring importance is doctrinal:

• It clarifies when the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA) does not preempt state-law tort claims, even where a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) forms the backdrop of the dispute.
• It confirms that large-scale assignments of individual members’ claims to a labor association are generally valid under Texas law and are not void merely because they provide an alternative to associational-standing or class-action mechanisms.

The case pits Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, against SWAPA, the labor association representing roughly 11,000 Southwest Airlines pilots. SWAPA alleges that Boeing misrepresented the safety and training requirements of the 737 MAX and interfered with SWAPA’s relationship with Southwest, thereby inducing SWAPA and its members to agree in a 2016 CBA to fly the MAX on false premises, and causing economic loss when the aircraft was grounded after two fatal crashes.

Two central issues reached the Texas Supreme Court:

1. Whether the Railway Labor Act preempts SWAPA’s state-law claims against Boeing because resolving those claims allegedly requires interpretation of the 2006 and 2016 CBAs between Southwest and SWAPA.
2. Whether assignments executed by thousands of SWAPA pilots, transferring their individual claims against Boeing to SWAPA, are void as against public policy and thus incapable of conferring standing on SWAPA as assignee.

The Court holds that the RLA does not preempt these state tort claims and that the pilot-to-union assignments are valid and not contrary to public policy. The opinion thus solidifies two important propositions in Texas law:

• RLA preemption is limited to state-law claims that require interpretation of a CBA. Merely litigating in a CBA “context” is not enough.
• Mass assignments of individual claims to a non-profit association are permissible and do not, without more, “circumvent” associational-standing or class-action requirements.

II. Summary of the Opinion

Justice Boyd, writing for the Court (with Chief Justice Blacklock and Justices Lehrmann, Devine, Busby, Young, and Sullivan joining), resolves the case as follows:

1. No RLA Preemption. Applying U.S. Supreme Court precedent (in particular Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. v. Norris and Lingle v. Norge Division of Magic Chef, Inc.), the Court concludes that SWAPA’s claims for fraudulent and negligent misrepresentation and tortious interference can be adjudicated without “substantially dependent” interpretation of the CBAs. The 2016 CBA’s requirement that pilots fly the MAX is uncontested, and whether the earlier 2006 CBA already required them to fly the MAX is not dispositive of the tort claims. Thus, the RLA does not preempt.
2. Assignments Valid; Dismissal Must Be Without Prejudice. The Court agrees that SWAPA lacks associational standing to pursue its members’ claims in this case and notes that SWAPA did not seek review of that ruling. However, it holds that the pilots’ assignments of their claims to SWAPA are not void as against public policy and are capable of giving SWAPA standing as assignee in a separate action. Accordingly, the trial court’s dismissal of the “representative” claims must be without prejudice so that they may be pursued via assignment.
3. Scope of Remand. Boeing did not challenge the court of appeals’ holding that SWAPA has standing to pursue its own organizational claims (membership dues, legal fees). The Supreme Court therefore affirms the court of appeals’ judgment remanding those “own behalf” claims to the trial court. Questions about joinder, consolidation, severance, and trial of the thousands of assigned claims are expressly left for the trial court in the separate action.

Justice Bland, joined by Justice Huddle, dissents in part, expressing concern (as reflected in the majority’s citations to the dissent) that the assignments improperly “circumvent” the Legislature’s associational-standing framework and class-action safeguards. The majority declines to extend the Court’s prior public-policy limits on assignments to this context.

III. Factual and Procedural Background

A. The CBAs and the 737 MAX

SWAPA and Southwest operated under a 2006 CBA listing aircraft types to be flown by Southwest pilots. The Boeing 737 MAX, launched in 2011, was not among them. Southwest purchased 150 MAX aircraft, believing the 2006 CBA’s list was broad enough to encompass the new variant; SWAPA disagreed, and its pilots initially refused to fly the MAX.

Under the RLA framework, the 2006 CBA became “amendable” in 2012. A CBA under the RLA rarely “expires” outright; instead, once amendable, the parties must maintain the status quo while negotiating a new agreement, assisted by the Act’s dispute-resolution machinery. Negotiations over whether pilots would be required to fly the MAX—including whether the status quo under the 2006 CBA already permitted that—were contentious and highly public.

SWAPA sued Southwest in federal court in 2016, claiming the 2006 CBA did not authorize Southwest to require its pilots to fly the MAX. During settlement negotiations, SWAPA alleges that Boeing entered the fray and assured the union that:

• the MAX was “essentially a more fuel efficient” version of existing 737 models; and
• pilots could operate the MAX without additional training.

Relying on these representations, SWAPA agreed in a 2016 CBA that its members would fly the MAX, and it dismissed its federal suit against Southwest. Southwest began MAX operations in 2017. Following the 2018 and 2019 MAX crashes and the FAA grounding, Southwest canceled hundreds of flights, and SWAPA pilots were left without planes to fly—leading, according to SWAPA, to lost wages and association income.

B. The State-Court Suit Against Boeing

SWAPA sued Boeing in Texas state court, asserting:

• fraudulent misrepresentation,
• negligent misrepresentation,
• tortious interference with SWAPA’s contractual and business relationship with Southwest (limited to prospective interference relating to the 2016 CBA),
• negligence, and
• fraud by non-disclosure.

SWAPA sought:

• its own damages (loss of membership dues and legal fees), and
• its members’ lost wages (initially on a representative/associational basis).

C. Removal, Remand, and Jurisdictional Plea

Boeing removed to federal court, arguing that the RLA “completely preempts” SWAPA’s state-law claims (thereby creating federal-question jurisdiction) because adjudication would require interpreting the CBAs. The federal district court rejected the complete-preemption argument and remanded, holding that although the claims might require CBA interpretation, the RLA does not “wholly displace” state-law claims and thus does not support removal under the complete-preemption doctrine.

Back in state court, Boeing filed a plea to the jurisdiction contending that:

1. the RLA preempts SWAPA’s claims (as an ordinary preemption defense), and
2. SWAPA lacks associational standing to assert claims on behalf of individual pilots.

In response to the standing challenge, 8,794 SWAPA members executed written assignments of their claims against Boeing to SWAPA, authorizing SWAPA to prosecute, settle, and collect on those claims and waiving their individual right to sue Boeing. SWAPA filed those assignments and Boeing amended its jurisdictional plea to argue that the assignments are void as against public policy because they are designed to evade Texas associational-standing and class-action rules.

The trial court granted Boeing’s plea to the jurisdiction and dismissed SWAPA’s claims with prejudice without explanation. After the ruling, SWAPA:

• moved to modify the judgment to make the dismissal of the representative claims “without prejudice” so it could use the assignments in a separate action; and
• filed a second suit in the same court, this time explicitly as assignee of the 8,794 pilots.

The trial court denied the motion to modify and dismissed the second suit on res judicata grounds. On appeal, the Dallas Court of Appeals:

• held that the RLA does not preempt SWAPA’s state-law claims,
• held SWAPA lacks associational standing to pursue members’ claims,
• held SWAPA does have standing to pursue its own organizational claims,
• held the assignments are not void, but cannot retroactively cure standing in the first suit, and
• modified the judgment to dismiss the representative claims without prejudice and remanded SWAPA’s own claims for further proceedings.

Boeing petitioned for Texas Supreme Court review on two issues: RLA preemption, and validity of the assignments (and thus whether dismissal should have been with prejudice). SWAPA did not file a cross-petition to preserve its associational-standing argument.

IV. Precedents Cited and Their Influence

A. Federal Preemption and the RLA/LMRA Analogy

The Court’s RLA analysis is anchored in U.S. Supreme Court precedent:

• Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. v. Norris, 512 U.S. 246 (1994). Norris held that the RLA preempts state-law claims only when resolution of those claims depends on interpreting a CBA; purely factual questions that can be resolved without interpreting CBA terms are not preempted. The Court here quotes Norris for the proposition that the Act “says nothing about the substantive rights a State may provide to workers when adjudication of those rights does not depend upon the interpretation of [a CBA].”
• Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U.S. 399 (1988). In the LMRA setting, Lingle established that §301 preempts state law only when resolution of a claim requires interpreting a CBA; the presence of overlapping factual inquiries between a CBA grievance and a state-law claim does not alone trigger preemption. The Texas Court adopts Lingle’s “purely factual questions” distinction and its focus on the elements of the state cause of action.
• Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202 (1985). Lueck distinguished between claims that are “tangentially involving” a CBA and those that are “substantially dependent” on analysis of CBA terms; only the latter are preempted. The phrase “substantially dependent” is central to the Texas Court’s framing.
• Local 174, Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U.S. 95 (1962). Lucas Flour underscored the need for uniform interpretation of CBAs to avoid “disruptive” conflicting interpretations; this rationale underlies both RLA and LMRA preemption and explains why CBA interpretation is the preemption trigger.

The Court also cites Detroit & Toledo Shore Line Railroad v. United Transportation Union, Consolidated Rail Corp. v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association, and Central Airlines to explain the RLA’s purpose: promoting labor-management stability in rail and air industries by channeling “major” disputes (formation/creation of CBAs) and “minor” disputes (interpretation/application of CBAs) into a mandatory arbitral process (adjustment boards).

B. Complete vs Ordinary Preemption

To distinguish complete preemption (a jurisdictional doctrine) from ordinary preemption (a defense on the merits), the opinion references:

• Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386 (1987) and Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Taylor, 481 U.S. 58 (1987), explaining that complete preemption allows removal only when a federal statute so thoroughly displaces state law that a state-law claim is “recharacterized” as a federal claim for jurisdictional purposes.
• Beneficial National Bank v. Anderson, 539 U.S. 1 (2003), similarly explaining the doctrine’s scope.
• Horton v. Kansas City Southern Railway Co., 692 S.W.3d 112 (Tex. 2024), which the Court quotes for the proposition that a state-law claim arises under federal law for removal only if a federal statute “wholly displaces” the state law.

These citations matter because Boeing initially invoked complete preemption in federal court but then pressed ordinary RLA preemption in state court. The Texas Supreme Court emphasizes that the federal court’s remark that SWAPA’s claims would require CBA interpretation was not essential to the remand ruling on complete preemption and therefore not binding in the preemption analysis now before it.

C. Standing and Associational Suits

The Court’s discussion of associational standing draws on:

• Texas Association of Business v. Texas Air Control Board, 852 S.W.2d 440 (Tex. 1993), which adopted the three-part Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission test for associational standing: (a) individual members have standing in their own right; (b) the interests asserted are germane to the association’s purpose; and (c) neither the claim nor the relief requested requires individual members’ participation.
• Texas Business Organizations Code § 252.007(b), codifying associational standing for nonprofit associations using the Hunt test.
• First Bank v. Brumitt, 519 S.W.3d 95 (Tex. 2017), and Rule 53.1 of the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure, for the principle that a party seeking to “alter” a court of appeals’ judgment must file a petition for review; a respondent may argue only alternative grounds that support, but do not alter, that judgment.

Because SWAPA did not cross-petition, it waived its argument that it had associational standing in this action.

D. Assignability and Public Policy

The majority’s approval of the mass assignments relies heavily on Texas assignment jurisprudence, especially:

• State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Gandy, 925 S.W.2d 696 (Tex. 1996). Gandy held certain assignments void as against public policy where they “tend to increase and distort litigation,” particularly collusive post-judgment assignments in coverage disputes that risk misleading juries and shifting burdens unfairly to less culpable defendants. Boeing urged the Court to extend this public policy to invalidate the SWAPA assignments.
• Elbaor v. Smith, 845 S.W.2d 240 (Tex. 1992), which condemned certain Mary Carter agreements (secret partial settlements) for distorting the adversarial process—a concept Gandy imported into assignment analysis.
• Henry S. Miller Commercial Co. v. Newsom, Terry & Newsom, LLP, 709 S.W.3d 562 (Tex. 2024), reaffirming that causes of action are generally assignable in Texas unless public policy dictates otherwise.
• Texas Medical Resources, LLP v. Molina Healthcare of Texas, Inc., 659 S.W.3d 424 (Tex. 2023), and PPG Industries, Inc. v. JMB/Houston Centers Partners, 146 S.W.3d 79 (Tex. 2004), recognizing that certain personal or punitive statutory claims (e.g., some DTPA or unfair-settlement claims) are unassignable.
• Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Marketing on Hold Inc., 308 S.W.3d 909 (Tex. 2010), which upheld assignments to a third party that was not a “stranger/entrepreneur” to the underlying events. The Texas Supreme Court leans on this to emphasize SWAPA’s close connection to the underlying dispute—it negotiated the CBA and allegedly relied on Boeing’s misrepresentations.
• Jackson v. Thweatt, 883 S.W.2d 171 (Tex. 1994), and York’s Administrator v. McNutt, 16 Tex. 13 (1856), for the basic assignment principle that the assignee “steps into the shoes” of the assignor and acquires no greater substantive rights.

The Court concludes that the SWAPA assignments are “property-based and remedial,” not “personal and punitive,” and that they do not inherently distort or unduly complicate litigation.

The Court also looks to federal standing/assignment precedent:

• Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services, Inc., 554 U.S. 269 (2008). Sprint sustained standing where assignees “passed through” litigation proceeds to assignors, recounting centuries of practice allowing assignees to sue even when they have promised to remit recovery. The Texas Court invokes Sprint to reject Boeing’s argument that SWAPA’s agreement to distribute recovery back to pilots makes the assignments suspect “pass-through” devices.
• Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U.S. 765 (2000), for the concept that an assignee of a claim has suffered the same injury in fact and may litigate it.
• Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490 (1975), recognizing assignment, associational suits, and class actions as distinct avenues to obtain standing.

E. Procedural Discretion: Joinder, Severance, and Consolidation

On how to manage thousands of assigned claims, the Court cites Texas procedural authorities:

• Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 39, 40, 41, 174, governing joinder of parties, consolidation, severance, and separate trials to further convenience and avoid prejudice.
• Sealy Emergency Room, L.L.C. v. Free Standing Emergency Room Managers of America, L.L.C., 685 S.W.3d 816 (Tex. 2024), and F.F.P. Operating Partners, L.P. v. Duenez, 237 S.W.3d 680 (Tex. 2007), emphasizing that severance exists to “avoid prejudice, do justice, and increase convenience.”
• Long v. Castle Texas Production Ltd. Partnership, 426 S.W.3d 73 (Tex. 2014), In re State, 355 S.W.3d 611 (Tex. 2011), and In re Ethyl Corp., 975 S.W.2d 606 (Tex. 1998), all reinforcing that such procedural decisions lie within the trial court’s sound discretion, though not unbounded.
• Bennett v. Grant, 525 S.W.3d 642 (Tex. 2017), and Womack v. Berry, 291 S.W.2d 677 (Tex. 1956), for the deferential abuse-of-discretion standard applied to severance and consolidation decisions.
• Citizens Insurance Co. of America v. Daccach, 217 S.W.3d 430 (Tex. 2007), for the principle that no plaintiff is required to proceed via class action.

These authorities support the Court’s conclusion that the assignments may produce complex litigation, but that such complexity is routinely addressed by trial courts using existing procedural tools—not by declaring assignments void per se.

V. The Court’s Legal Reasoning

A. RLA Preemption: No CBA Interpretation Required

1. The RLA’s Statutory Scheme

The RLA, extended to air carriers by 45 U.S.C. § 181 et seq., seeks:

• to “avoid any interruption to commerce,”
• to protect employees’ freedom of association, and
• to provide for the “prompt and orderly settlement” of disputes over “rates of pay, rules, or working conditions” and “disputes growing out of grievances or out of the interpretation or application of” CBAs.

It distinguishes between:

• Major disputes: involving the formation or modification of CBAs—“efforts to create contractual rights.”
• Minor disputes: involving grievances and interpretation/application of existing CBAs—“efforts to enforce contractual rights.”

Minor disputes must be resolved exclusively through carrier–employee adjustment boards, not in court. Because those boards interpret CBAs, courts have developed a preemption doctrine to ensure CBA interpretation remains centralized.

2. Scope of Preemption Under Norris and Lingle

Applying Norris and Lingle, the Texas Supreme Court reiterates:

• The RLA (like the LMRA) preempts state-law claims if and only if “resolution of a state-law claim is substantially dependent upon analysis of the terms of a collective-bargaining agreement.”
• State-law rights that can be adjudicated “independent of” any CBA—where the CBA is not the “only source” of the right—are not preempted.
• Even if resolving a CBA grievance and a state tort claim involves “precisely the same set of facts,” preemption does not apply so long as adjudication of the state claim does not require interpreting the CBA.

Thus, the question is not whether a CBA exists or is “in the background,” but whether the court must interpret contested CBA terms to resolve the elements of the state-law causes of action.

3. Examination of SWAPA’s Claims

SWAPA asserted:

• fraudulent misrepresentation,
• negligent misrepresentation, and
• tortious interference with a prospective business relationship (the 2016 CBA).

All are classic Texas torts. To adjudicate them, a court must answer questions such as:

• Did Boeing make materially false statements or omissions about the MAX?
• Did Boeing intend SWAPA or its members to rely on those statements?
• Did SWAPA and/or the individual pilots actually rely on them?
• Would SWAPA have agreed in the 2016 CBA to fly the MAX absent those misrepresentations?
• Did that reliance proximately cause SWAPA’s and the pilots’ economic losses?

These are quintessential “purely factual questions” about conduct, states of mind, and causation—questions that, under Lingle, are not preempted merely because they occur in a unionized workplace and concern decisions made in collective bargaining.

SWAPA does not challenge the meaning of the 2016 CBA’s requirement that pilots fly the MAX. It accepts that the CBA obligated them to do so. Instead, it claims the CBA obligation was procured by Boeing’s misrepresentations and that the grounding of the MAX then produced economic losses.

4. Boeing’s 2006 CBA Argument and the Court’s Response

Boeing’s strongest preemption argument was that causation and damages could not be evaluated without interpreting the 2006 CBA to determine whether, even before 2016, SWAPA pilots were already contractually obligated to fly the MAX. If that were so, Boeing argued, SWAPA could not show any new injury caused by the 2016 CBA or by Boeing’s alleged misrepresentations.

The Court rejects that premise for two independent reasons:

1. Factual posture under the 2006 CBA. As a matter of fact, pilots never flew the MAX under the 2006 CBA; they consistently insisted they were not required to, up to and including filing suit against Southwest in federal court. This weighs against treating the 2006 CBA as conclusively obligating pilots to fly the MAX.
2. Independence of the 2016 negotiation. Even if the 2006 CBA required flying the MAX, that obligation did not force SWAPA to replicate the same obligation in a 2016 CBA once the prior agreement became amendable. The union could have refused to reaffirm that obligation in the new agreement. SWAPA alleges that, but for Boeing’s misrepresentations, it would not have agreed in 2016 to require its members to fly the MAX—regardless of what the 2006 CBA may have provided.

Because SWAPA’s asserted right not to be fraudulently induced into the 2016 commitment derives from general Texas tort law, not from the 2006 CBA, and because its proof will focus on reliance and causation tied to the 2016 negotiations, interpretation of the 2006 CBA is not the “only source” of the right nor a necessary step in adjudication. The Court emphasizes it is not deciding whether SWAPA’s version of events is factually correct; it holds only that those factual disputes can be resolved without interpreting CBA terms.

5. Treatment of the Federal Remand Order

Boeing pointed to the federal district court’s statement that SWAPA’s claims “will require interpretation of the CBA” as support for preemption. The Texas Supreme Court notes:

• The district court applied the “complete preemption” doctrine and expressly concluded, with both parties’ agreement, that whether the claims required CBA interpretation had no bearing on its jurisdictional ruling.
• The federal court held only that the RLA does not “completely preempt” state-law claims for removal purposes, not that the claims were or were not preempted as a substantive matter.

Accordingly, the district court’s remark is dicta and not binding on the Texas courts’ ordinary-preemption analysis.

6. Scope of RLA Preemption for Third-Party Disputes

SWAPA also argued that the RLA’s preemptive force applies only to disputes “between” carriers and employees, not to suits between a union and an outside manufacturer. The statutory language (limiting RLA arbitration to disputes between carriers and their employees) gives that argument some textual support.

However, numerous federal appellate decisions have extended RLA/LMRA preemption to suits by or against third parties whenever CBA interpretation is required (e.g., Healy, Anderson, Kaufman, Baylis). Boeing relied on these cases and argued that preemption may exist even when the adjustment boards have no jurisdiction over the particular parties, creating a “remedial gap.”

Recognizing this line of authority, the Texas Supreme Court explicitly declines to resolve whether RLA preemption extends to such third-party disputes. It deems the question unnecessary because, whether or not RLA preemption can ever apply to such claims, it does not apply here: SWAPA’s claims do not require CBA interpretation under Norris and Lingle.

B. Validity of the Pilot-to-SWAPA Assignments

1. Waiver of Associational Standing Argument

On appeal, the court of appeals held that SWAPA lacked associational standing under Texas Business Organizations Code § 252.007(b) because the claims and the relief sought required individual pilots’ participation. SWAPA did not file a petition for review of the portion of the court of appeals’ judgment affirming dismissal of the members’ claims on that ground.

Before the Texas Supreme Court, SWAPA mentioned associational standing in passing, but the Court holds that any effort to revive that theory would “alter the court of appeals’ judgment” and thus required a cross-petition. Under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 53.1, SWAPA’s failure to file such a petition waives the associational-standing argument in this Court. SWAPA’s claim to standing must therefore rest entirely on the assignments.

2. Content and Effect of the Assignments

The assignments executed by roughly 8,794 pilots:

• “assign and transfer to SWAPA all rights, title, and interest” in any claims the pilot has against Boeing “arising out of the MAX Crisis,”
• grant SWAPA authority to “prosecute, settle, and/or compromise” those claims,
• authorize SWAPA to “collect, receive, and distribute” the pilot’s damages, and
• provide that damages recovered will be distributed proportionally in relation to each pilot’s gross W-2 earnings.

Critically, each pilot acknowledges that by making this assignment, he or she is “waiving” the right to individually pursue any such claims against Boeing.

Under longstanding Texas law (e.g., Thweatt, York’s Administrator), an assignee “steps into the shoes” of the assignor, acquiring the same rights and subject to the same defenses. Thus, if the assignments are valid, SWAPA has standing because it is now the legal owner of the claims, and its injury-in-fact is that it owns legal claims which allegedly have been invaded by Boeing’s conduct.

3. Boeing’s Public-Policy Challenge

Boeing characterized the assignments as “pass-through” devices whose “sole purpose” is to evade the Legislature’s associational-standing framework in § 252.007(b) and to avoid the requirements for class actions. It urged the Court to extend Gandy and related cases to declare such assignments void as against public policy.

The Gandy line invalidates assignments that:

• are executed in highly collusive contexts (typically post-judgment assignments combined with covenants not to execute, to create greater leverage against an insurer), and
• “tend to increase and distort litigation,” by misleading the jury, undermining adversarial integrity, and exposing less culpable parties to unduly large judgments.

Boeing argued that mass assignments to SWAPA would similarly distort litigation by:

• placing effective control of thousands of claims in a single plaintiff with interests distinct from those of individual pilots,
• allowing SWAPA to act functionally as a representative or class-action lead without meeting associational or Rule 42 standards, and
• creating procedural complexity and potential unfairness in trial management.

4. The Court’s Rejection of the Gandy Analogy

The Texas Supreme Court declines to extend Gandy to the SWAPA assignments. It reasons that:

• Assignments are generally valid in Texas unless a specific, recognized public-policy concern applies. The Legislature knows how to bar specific assignments (e.g., certain statutory claims or, via contract, anti-assignment clauses) but has not barred assignments of this type.
• The SWAPA assignments do not inherently “make litigation more protracted and complex” than the alternative. Indeed, if each pilot sued individually, there could be “as many as 10,000 individual lawsuits,” which would be at least as complex.
• The claims at issue are “property-based and remedial” (lost wages, economic damages), not “personal and punitive” (like certain DTPA or unfair-settlement claims that have been held unassignable).
• SWAPA is not a “stranger/entrepreneur” but was the very entity that negotiated the CBA and allegedly relied on Boeing’s misrepresentations—a status akin to the assignee’s in Marketing on Hold.

The Court also rejects Boeing’s “pass-through” critique by invoking Sprint v. APCC: centuries of practice show that an assignee can sue even where it will remit most or all proceeds to the assignor. There is no general public policy against “passing through” pecuniary awards procured in litigation.

5. Assignments vs Associational Standing and Class Actions

A key conceptual point in the opinion is that:

Associational standing, class-action standing, and standing based on an assignment provide alternative means for obtaining standing, and, because of their distinct requirements, neither circumvents the other.

In other words:

• Associational standing allows an organization to sue on behalf of members without owning their claims, but only where individual participation is not required.
• Class actions allow a representative plaintiff to litigate common claims on behalf of a defined class, subject to strict numerosity, typicality, adequacy, and predominance requirements.
• Assignments transfer legal ownership of claims to the assignee, who then sues in its own right as the real party in interest. No class certification or associational standing showing is necessary—but the assignee must still prove every element of each individual assigned claim.

Because SWAPA waived associational standing and has not sought class certification, it cannot use the assignments to behave as though it had met those requirements. It must instead:

• prove for each assigned claim that Boeing is liable to that specific pilot, and
• establish the particular damages suffered by each pilot.

The Court stresses that this burden arises not as a matter of public policy, but as a direct consequence of the substantive law of assignments: an assignee acquires no greater rights than the assignor and must prove the same injury and causal connection the assignor would have had to prove.

6. Procedural Management Left to the Trial Court

Although the assignments potentially confront the trial court with thousands of individual claims, the Supreme Court views this as a problem of case management, not public policy. It notes that:

• Texas procedural rules already empower trial courts to join, sever, or separately try claims and parties to promote convenience and avoid prejudice.
• These decisions are entrusted to the trial court’s sound discretion, reviewable only for abuse.
• SWAPA “may not rely on the assignments as a means to circumvent the statutory and procedural requirements for associational standing.” The trial court must police that line in its procedural rulings.

Given that the assignments appear in a separate action (the second suit), the Court explicitly refrains from dictating how the trial court should structure that litigation. It holds only that the assignments are not void as against public policy and therefore confer standing on SWAPA as assignee.

VI. Impact and Significance

A. Clarifying RLA Preemption for State Tort Claims

This decision confirms and localizes in Texas the U.S. Supreme Court’s message in Norris and Lingle: the RLA’s preemptive force is relatively narrow. Key implications:

• State-law tort claims by unions or employees against third parties (such as manufacturers, contractors, or other non-carriers) will generally not be preempted unless interpreting the CBA is a necessary element of the plaintiff’s cause of action.
• The mere fact that a tort concerns the content or negotiation of a CBA does not automatically convert it into a preempted “minor dispute,” especially where the plaintiff’s rights derive from generally applicable state tort law, not from the CBA itself.
• Defendants invoking RLA preemption in Texas courts must focus on showing that the state-law claim cannot be adjudicated without resolving disputed CBA meaning; generic references to the CBA or overlapping factual background will not suffice.

For unions and their members, the decision preserves substantial access to state courts for fraud and interference claims arising out of labor negotiations, particularly where misrepresentations are alleged to have induced CBA commitments.

B. Exposing Non-Carrier Third Parties to Union Tort Suits

Although the Court avoids deciding whether RLA preemption applies to third-party disputes at all, its holding in practice opens the door for unions to sue outside parties—such as manufacturers—without being pushed into the RLA arbitral regime. Manufacturers and similar actors participating in CBA negotiations or influencing them can now expect:

• heightened scrutiny of statements made to unions and their counsel about safety, training, costs, or operational characteristics;
• greater potential exposure to fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and tortious interference claims in state court; and
• limited ability to invoke federal labor preemption to dismiss those suits unless they can show that adjudication hinges on disputed CBA interpretation.

C. Reinforcing Texas’s Pro-Assignment Baseline

The Court’s narrow reading of Gandy and its reaffirmation that claims are generally assignable strengthens Texas’s long-standing pro-assignment posture. Practitioners can draw the following lessons:

• Assignments of economic tort claims (e.g., misrepresentation leading to lost wages) to non-profit associations are valid absent specific statutory or contractual prohibitions.
• The fact that the assignee will distribute recovery back to the assignors does not make the assignment void or collusive.
• Public policy will rarely invalidate an assignment unless there is clear distortion of the adversarial process (e.g., collusive post-judgment arrangements targeting liability insurers, as in Gandy).

This has ramifications beyond labor law, potentially influencing how trade associations, professional societies, and other collective bodies structure litigation strategies on behalf of their members.

D. Assignments as an Alternative to Class Actions and Associational Suits

The decision clarifies that in Texas:

• Organizations cannot claim associational standing or class representative status without meeting the statutory and rule-based requirements for those mechanisms.
• However, if individual members voluntarily assign their claims, the organization may litigate them as owner of the claims without invoking associational standing or Rule 42.
• The price of that flexibility is evidentiary: the assignee must still prove liability and individualized damages for each assigned claim; courts will not presume commonality or predominance as they might in a certified class action.

This approach may make assignments attractive where:

• members prefer central coordination of litigation by an association they trust,
• class certification is uncertain or would be contested, or
• the claims are numerous but not easily aggregated due to individualized damages.

However, the majority’s emphasis that trial courts must ensure SWAPA proceeds “as an assignee and not as a representative association” suggests close judicial scrutiny of any attempt to use assignments as a de facto substitute for representative mechanisms without the corresponding procedural protections.

E. Complex Litigation Management

Practically, the Court’s confidence in assignments shifts the burden to trial courts to manage complexity. Anticipated consequences include:

• Increased use of joinder, severance, and consolidation to balance efficiency and fairness in multi-claim litigation.
• Potential for phased or bellwether trials, particularly in cases where numerous assigned claims share common liability questions but diverge in damages.
• Greater emphasis on case-specific management orders and pretrial procedures to keep large assigned-claim cases manageable.

The opinion explicitly counsels that trial courts are not vested with “unlimited discretion,” but are required to exercise their severance and joinder powers in a way that avoids prejudice, does justice, and increases convenience.

VII. Complex Concepts Explained in Plain Terms

1. The Railway Labor Act (RLA) and Preemption

The RLA is a federal law governing labor relations for railroads and airlines. Its goals are to:

• prevent strikes and service disruptions, and
• require orderly resolution of labor disputes through negotiation and arbitration.

It divides disputes into:

• Major disputes: about making or changing a CBA (creating new rights).
• Minor disputes: about interpreting or applying an existing CBA (enforcing rights already in place).

Minor disputes must go to a special arbitration panel (an “adjustment board”), not to court. To protect this system, federal courts developed “RLA preemption”: if a lawsuit essentially asks a court to resolve a minor dispute—that is, to interpret a CBA—state-law claims are barred and must be channeled into the arbitration system.

Importantly:

• Merely mentioning a CBA does not trigger preemption.
• Preemption applies only when you cannot decide the state claim without deciding what the CBA means.

2. Complete vs Ordinary Preemption

Two different concepts often travel under the “preemption” label:

• Complete preemption (rare) is a jurisdiction rule: certain federal statutes are so powerful that any related state-law claim is treated as a federal claim and can be removed from state to federal court.
• Ordinary preemption is a defense: federal law overrides state law on the merits, so the state claim should be dismissed, even if the case stays in state court.

In this case, the federal court decided only that the RLA does not support complete preemption. The Texas Supreme Court addressed ordinary preemption—whether SWAPA’s claims are substantively barred—not jurisdictional removal.

3. “Amendable” CBAs and the “Status Quo”

Under the RLA, CBAs rarely “expire.” Instead, they become “amendable” at a set date. At that point:

• The existing terms remain in force (the “status quo”).
• The parties must negotiate over any changes.

This matters here because even if the 2006 CBA arguably required pilots to fly the MAX (a contested question), SWAPA was not obligated to agree to that same obligation in the 2016 CBA. The union could have bargained for different terms. This is why SWAPA’s alleged injury—agreeing in 2016 to fly the MAX based on Boeing’s misrepresentations—does not depend on the content of the 2006 CBA.

4. Associational Standing vs Assignments vs Class Actions

• Associational standing: An association (like SWAPA) sues on behalf of its members without owning their claims. This is allowed only if:
  • each member would have standing individually,
  • the issues are germane to the organization’s purpose, and
  • the lawsuit does not require individual members’ participation (e.g., no individualized damages calculations).
• Assignments: A person (the assignor) transfers legal ownership of a claim to someone else (the assignee). The assignee then sues in its own name as if it had suffered the injury. The assignee must prove everything the assignor would have had to prove.
• Class actions: One or a few plaintiffs sue for a larger group (“the class”), but must meet procedural requirements showing that:
  • there are many similar claims (numerosity),
  • the representative’s claims are typical,
  • the representative and counsel will adequately protect the class, and
  • common issues predominate or a class action is otherwise superior.

The Court stresses that assignments are not a “back door” into associational standing or class actions. Each device has its own requirements and legal consequences.

5. Public Policy Limits on Assignments (Gandy)

Texas usually allows people to sell or assign their legal claims, but there are exceptions where assignments are considered harmful to the legal system. For example, in State Farm v. Gandy:

• An insured agreed with a plaintiff to accept a judgment and assign claims against the insurer in exchange for a covenant not to execute the judgment.
• The Court found that arrangement distorted the litigation process and threatened unfairness, so it declared such assignments void as against public policy in specific contexts.

The Court here determines that the SWAPA assignments do not raise the same concerns: they are not collusive settlements, not targeted at insurers, and do not inherently mislead a jury about who is really adverse to whom.

VIII. The Partial Dissent: Concerns About Circumvention

Although the full dissent is not set out in the majority opinion, references to it reveal its central concern: that allowing thousands of pilots to assign their claims to SWAPA enables the association to do indirectly what it cannot do directly under § 252.007(b)—litigate individualized damage claims requiring member participation without satisfying associational-standing or class-action standards.

Justice Bland appears to warn that:

• Assignments used for the purpose of aggregating many members’ claims into an association-led lawsuit may erode procedural safeguards the Legislature designed (through the associational-standing statute) and the judiciary enforces (through Rule 42 class actions).
• By treating assignments as functionally equivalent to an association suing “on behalf of” its members, the Court risks weakening the limits designed to protect absent claimants and defendants.

The majority’s response is that how SWAPA litigates the assigned claims is critical:

• If SWAPA attempts to litigate them as a representative body without proving each pilot’s individualized reliance, causation, and damages, trial courts must intervene and enforce procedural requirements.
• But the bare fact of assignment—without more—does not contravene public policy.

This dialogue between majority and dissent reflects a broader tension in modern procedure: how to balance efficiency and collective action against individual rights and procedural protections, particularly in mass-claim contexts.

IX. Conclusion and Key Takeaways

The Supreme Court of Texas’s decision in The Boeing Company v. SWAPA establishes two important principles in Texas law:

1. RLA preemption is narrow and functional. State-law tort claims involving unionized workers are not preempted merely because they arise in a CBA context. Preemption applies only where resolving the claim is “substantially dependent” on interpreting disputed CBA terms. Misrepresentation and tortious interference claims—focusing on factual questions of what was said, what was believed, and what decisions were made as a result—can proceed in state court when they do not require CBA interpretation.
2. Mass assignments to an association are permissible and not per se contrary to public policy. Thousands of pilots may validly assign their economic claims to their union, which then sues in its own name as assignee. Such assignments are distinct from associational standing or class actions, and they do not automatically “circumvent” those mechanisms. The assignee must still prove each individual assignor’s injury and damages, and trial courts retain broad discretion to manage the resulting complexity.

For labor organizations, manufacturers, employers, and practitioners, the decision offers a clear roadmap:

• Rely on the elements of the state-law claims, not the mere presence of a CBA, to analyze RLA preemption.
• Recognize assignments as a lawful and flexible, but not risk-free, vehicle for aggregating member claims in Texas.
• Expect trial courts to play a central role in structuring and managing multi-claim litigation arising from such assignments.

In the broader legal landscape, SWAPA reinforces the principle that federal labor law preemption, while vital to the integrity of collective bargaining, should not be expanded so far as to erase state-law remedies that can be adjudicated without intruding into CBA interpretation. At the same time, it underscores Texas’s continued willingness to permit innovative litigation structures—such as large-scale assignments—so long as they do not fundamentally distort the adversarial process or undermine statutory safeguards.