660
Opinion of the Court
of this Court has squarely confronted and explicitly upheld federal-question jurisdiction on the basis of the anticipated claim against which the declaratory-judgment plaintiff presents a nonfederal defense; and neither the Union nor the Government cites such a decision by any other federal court.4
Second, the Union's Skelly Oil argument assumes that what would suffice to sustain a declaratory-judgment action premised on § 1331 federal-question jurisdiction would suffice to sustain a declaratory-judgment action brought under § 301(a). But the language of the two provisions is quite different. Whereas § 1331 authorizes "civil actions arising under the . . . laws . . . of the United States" (which can arguably embrace a civil action presenting a defense to a federal claim), § 301(a) authorizes only "[s]uits for violation of contracts."
But assuming (without deciding) that the converse of Skelly Oil confers § 1331 jurisdiction, and that what suffices for § 1331 suffices for § 301(a) as well, the Union's prayer for a declaration that the collective-bargaining agreement was voidable is in our view inadequate to save the present suit, because it does not, and as far as the record shows it never did, present a case or controversy giving the Union access to federal courts. That is obviously so at the present time, because the collective-bargaining agreement, whether voidable or not, has expired; the only question is whether the parties had any concrete dispute over the contract's voidability at the time the suit was filed.
4 In Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust for Southern Cal., 463 U. S. 1 (1983), we observed, with seeming approval, that "[f]ederal courts have regularly taken original jurisdiction over declaratory judgment suits in which, if the declaratory judgment defendant brought a coercive action to enforce its rights, that suit would necessarily present a federal question." Id., at 19. The cases brought forward to support that observation, however, were suits by alleged patent infringers to declare a patent invalid, which of course themselves raise a federal question. See id., at 19, n. 19.
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