42
Opinion of the Court
NLRB, 124 F. 3d 788 (CA6 1997), cert. pending, No. 97-945; Bloom v. NLRB, 30 F. 3d 1001 (CA8 1994).
Second, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's judgment that it did not have jurisdiction over petitioner's challenge to the grace period provision. The court acknowledged that federal courts have jurisdiction over duty of fair representation claims, but, noting our admonishment in Beck not to be deceived by a plaintiff's attempt to disguise an unfair labor practice claim as a fair representation claim, Communications Workers v. Beck, 487 U. S., at 743, the court held that petitioner's claim was not a fair representation claim. According to the court, the statutory question presented by petitioner's challenge to the grace period provision was the central issue for resolution, and under these circumstances, the claim fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the NLRB. 124 F. 3d, at 1039-1041.
We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict over the facial validity of a union security clause that tracks the language of § 8(a)(3), and to clarify the standards for defining the primary jurisdiction of the NLRB. 523 U. S. 1019 (1998).
II
A
This case presents a narrow question: Does a union breach its duty of fair representation merely by negotiating a union security clause that tracks the language of § 8(a)(3)? To understand why this is a narrow question, it is helpful to keep in mind what issues we are not resolving in this case. First, we are not deciding whether SAG illegally enforced the union security clause to require petitioner to become a member of the union or to require her to pay dues for noncollective bargaining activities. Petitioner's complaint includes a claim that the union breached the duty of fair representation by enforcing the clause illegally, but that claim is not before us. The Court of Appeals held that there were factual disputes that precluded the grant of summary
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