126
Opinion of the Court
C
1
Before this Court, however, the Commissioner does not confine herself to the assertion that Livadas's claim would have been pre-empted by LMRA § 301. Indeed, largely putting aside that position, she has sought here to cast the policy in different terms, as expressing a "conscious decision," see Brief for Respondent 14, to keep the State's "hands off" the claims of employees protected by collective-bargaining agreements, either because the Division's efforts and resources are more urgently needed by others or because official restraint will actually encourage the collective-bargaining and arbitral processes favored by federal law. The latter, more ambitious defense has been vigorously taken up by the Commissioner's amici, who warn that invalidation of the disputed policy would sound the death knell for other, more common governmental measures that take account of collective-bargaining processes or treat workers represented by unions differently from others in any respect.
Although there surely is no bar to our considering these alternative explanations, cf. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471, 475, n. 6 (1970) (party may defend judgment on basis not relied upon below), we note, as is often the case with such late-blooming rationales, that the overlap between what the Commissioner now claims to be state policy and what the state legislature has enacted into law is awkwardly inexact. First, if the Commissioner's policy (or California
concerning the interpretation or application of any collective-bargaining agreement," in which event an "agreement to arbitrate" such disputes is to be given effect. Nor does the Howard decision, the apparent font of the Commissioner's policy, appear untrue to § 301 teachings: there, an employee sought to have an "unpaid wage" claim do the office of a claim that a collective-bargaining agreement entitled him to a higher wage; that sort of claim, however, derives its existence from the collective-bargaining agreement and, accordingly, falls within any customary understanding of arbitral jurisdiction. See 53 Cal. App. 3d, at 836, 126 Cal. Rptr., at 411.
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