360
Syllabus
cious" under the Administrative Procedure Act. Although it makes polling useless as a means of insulating withdrawal of recognition against an unfair-labor-practice charge, there are other reasons why an employer would wish to conduct a poll. Similarly, although the Board's avowed preference for Board-supervised elections over polls should logically produce a more rigorous standard for polling, there are other reasons why that standard ought to be less rigorous; since it would be rational to set the polling standard either higher or lower than the threshold for a Board-supervised election, it is not irrational for the Board to split the difference. Pp. 363-366.
(b) On the evidence presented, a reasonable jury could not have found that Allentown lacked a "good-faith reasonable doubt" about whether Local 724 enjoyed continuing employee support. The Board's contrary finding rests on a refusal to credit probative circumstantial evidence, and on evidentiary demands that go beyond the substantive standard the Board purports to apply. Accepting the Board's concession that Allentown did receive reliable information that 7 of the 32 bargaining-unit employees did not support the union, the remaining 25 would have had to support the union by a margin of 17 to 8—a ratio of more than 2 to 1—if the union commanded majority support. The statements of various employees proffered by Allentown would cause anyone to doubt that degree of support, and neither the Board nor the AL J discussed any evidence that Allentown should have weighed on the other side. The Board cannot covertly transform its presumption of continuing majority support into a working assumption that all of a successor's employees support the union until proved otherwise. Pp. 366-371.
(c) This Court need not determine whether, as Allentown asserts, the Board has consistently rejected or discounted similarly probative evidence in prior cases. Such a practice could not cause "good-faith reasonable doubt" to mean something more than what the phrase connotes, or render irrelevant to the Board's decision any evidence that tends to establish the existence of a good-faith reasonable doubt. Pp. 372-380. 83 F. 3d 1483, reversed and remanded.
Scalia, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court with respect to Part I, the opinion of the Court with respect to Part II, in which Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined, and the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts III and IV, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and O'Connor, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Rehnquist, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which O'Connor, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined, post, p. 380. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined, post, p. 388.
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