Cite as: 522 U. S. 359 (1998)
Opinion of Rehnquist, C. J.
NLRB v. Curtin Matheson Scientific, Inc., 494 U. S. 775, 778 (1990). While simply stated, what this rule means in practice is harder to pin down. As suggested by the Court's opinion, ante, at 371-373, despite its billing as a "good-faith reasonable doubt" standard, this test appears to be quite rigorous. The Board so concedes: "It is true that the Board's 'reasonable doubt' standard is sufficiently rigorous and fact-specific that employers often cannot be certain in advance whether their evidentiary basis either for taking a poll or for withdrawing recognition will ultimately be deemed to have met that standard." Brief for Respondent 38.
The Board's standard is sufficiently stringent so as to exclude most circumstantial evidence (and quite a bit of direct evidence) from consideration and therefore to preclude polling except in extremely limited circumstances—ironically, those in which a poll has almost no practical value. It requires as a prerequisite to questioning a union's majority support that the employer have information that it is forbidden to obtain by the most effective method. See Curtin Matheson, supra, at 797 (Rehnquist, C. J., concurring) ("I have considerable doubt whether the Board may insist that good-faith doubt be determined only on the basis of sentiments of individual employees, and at the same time bar the employer from using what might be the only effective means of determining those sentiments"); 494 U. S., at 799, and n. 3 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). The Board's argument that polls are still valuable in ensuring that the union lacks majority support in fact, effectively concedes that polls will have only extremely limited scope. The Board's standard also leaves little practical value for employers in polling, since a losing union can ex post challenge a poll on the same grounds as a withdrawal of recognition, as happened here.
The Board argues first that its employer polling standard is authorized by, and consistent with, the Act because it promotes the overriding goal of industrial peace. Polling purportedly threatens industrial peace because it "raises si-
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