On Friday the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case next term that could wipe out public-sector unions.
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If the Court does overturn the Appeals Court ruling it would be reversing four decades of settled case law, notes NNU, going back to a case known as Abood v. Detroit Board of Education in 1977 in which the court firmly set in place the current system permitting individual workers to choose to opt out of dues payments for political activity, such as union spending on elections or candidates.
The Supreme Court will rule on laws created to force public employees into unions in its 2016 session after accepting a suit from a California teacher Tuesday.
For many of those who opt to pay fees instead of joining a union, it’s a means of avoiding putting personal money into political causes they don’t support, such as labor’s campaign donations to Democrats.
In other words, at least five justices appear inclined to hold that public sector collective bargaining is inherently political and that forcing someone to contribute toward it would violate the First Amendment right to be free from compulsory speech. About 30 to 40 percent of the approximately $1,000 in dues that California teachers pay annually funds political activities.
There is virtually no chance that the Supreme Court will disagree. But a state that wants this exclusive representation need not allow agency fees for unions to exist.
Rebecca Friedrichs is the teacher at the center of it all.
Leaders of some of the nation’s largest public sector unions issued a joint statement calling the lawsuit an effort to weaken labor rights. But they must pay a fee – a bit less than dues – to cover the union’s cost of representing their interests, for example in negotiating higher wages. But Justice Samuel Alito said in a 2014 opinion that the reasoning in Abood was “questionable on several grounds”, essentially inviting new challenges.
“When people come together in a union, they can help make sure that our communities have jobs that support our families”.
“This case offers no sound basis for testing whether there is a Constitutionally relevant line between conditions of employment and matters that are principally issues of public policy”, said state Attorney General Kamala Harris, one of the named defendants, in a brief to the court. Public workers in half the states are required to pay “fair share” fees if they are represented by a union, even if they are not members.
The case, Friedrichs v. Wilford, pits public unions against conservative groups seeking to dilute their power.
Mandatory union dues are currently forbidden in 25 states, and Pell hopes the Supreme Court will extend that nationwide. But there is good reason to expect that the current court might rule that way.
However, as last week’s 6-3 Supreme Court ruling upholding a key provision of the Affordable Care Act showed, a willingness to revisit a case does not necessarily foreshadow a decision to overturn it.
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CTA didn’t respond to a request for comment from TheDCNF.
