Any person whose rights secured by the provisions of this subchapter have been infringed by any violation of this subchapter may bring a civil action in a district court of the United States for such relief (including injunctions) as may be appropriate.
[a] fair referendum assuring the equal right to vote under § 101(a)(1) includes the right of members to have the vote scheduled at a time when they can exercise their vote and the right to be free from intimidation or fear of reprisal from union officials....
Plainly, [§ 101(a)(1) ] is no more than a command that members and classes of members shall not be discriminated against in their right to nominate and vote. And Congress carefully prescribed that even this right against discrimination is subject to reasonable rules and regulations by the union. The complaining union members here have not been discriminated against in any way and have been denied no privilege or right to vote or nominate which the union has granted to others.
The district court found that a previous vote conducted by the local had violated members' rights under § 101(a)(1) of the Labor–Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (“LMRDA”), 29 U.S.C. § 411(a)(1) (1985), and that there was a genuine threat of future violations. We conclude that the complaint does not allege a violation of § 101(a)(1), which bars unequal treatment of union members in the exercise of their voting rights, and that any exception to that scope of the statute is inapplicable here.
Jurisdiction, therefore, is not defeated as respondents seem to contend, by the possibility that the averments might fail to state a cause of action on which petitioners could actually recover. For it is well settled that the failure to state a proper cause of action calls for a judgment on the merits and not for a dismissal for want of jurisdiction. Whether the complaint states a cause of action on which relief could be granted is a question of law and just as issues of fact it must be decided after and not before the court has assumed jurisdiction over the controversy. If the court does later exercise its jurisdiction to determine that the allegations in the complaint do not state a ground for relief, then dismissal of the case would be on the merits, not for want of jurisdiction.
[W]here union officials have continuously heretofore attempted to suppress dissent, as has happened here, the courts of this district have not been hesitant to order appropriate relief. I find that such action *67 is called for here. In general, union voting is almost sui generis since it is recognized that there is an enormous risk of abuse of power by the incumbent leadership. Here, there have been abuses of power that resulted in an inadequate notice of the vote in terms of both its hours and its substance, a lack of access to the vote for substantial numbers of members in terms of its location and hours, a ballot troublesome in form and content, and most troubling of all, a pattern of intimidation of voting members by the Local leadership, all causing the February 19, 1997 vote to have been conducted in violation of the rights of the members of Local 32B–32J, including plaintiffs, under Section 101(a)(1) of the LMRDA, 29 U.S.C. § 411(a)(1). (citations and footnote omitted)
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