Kelsey-Hayes Company, et al. v. International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, et al.

Since this Court handed down M&G Polymers USA, LLC v. Tackett, 135 S. Ct. 926 (2015), a number of Sixth Circuit judges have declined to follow the decision. Their opinions reflect a reluctance to abandon the “Yard-Man inference” rejected in Tackett. Other Sixth Circuit judges have followed Tackett. What has resulted is a split within the Sixth Circuit and a set of irreconcilable opinions. Dissenting from the denial of en banc review, Judge Griffin, joined by Judge Gilman, wrote that “[o]ur post-Tackett case law is a mess,” with decisions “in irreconcilable conflict regarding how courts are to view durational clauses.” So intractable is the split that Judge Sutton—who characterized the state of affairs as “[a]n intra-circuit split accompanied by an inter-circuit divide followed by a lack of conformity to a Supreme Court decision”— reluctantly concurred in denying en banc review because “there is good reason to fear that a majority of the en banc court would fail to agree on a majority view.” As in “Whac-A-Mole,” Yard-Man has again reared its head. So the Court must intercede once more. The question presented is: Did the Sixth Circuit, in defiance of Tackett, wrongly reject the principle that a general durational clause in a collective bargaining agreement, absent