Police Associations and Unions Face Severe Threat
Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a lawsuit that is making the claim that compulsory union dues is a violation of the Constitution, in particular the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to free speech.
If the Justices rule in favor of the California teachers who filed the suit (hmm, wonder who’s backing them?), dues payment will be voluntary, not compulsory, which will have a devastating impact on all unions representing police, fire, teachers, and other employees who work for federal, state, county, town, or city government.
If your association writes an op-ed piece, puts something online, or produces some advertisements, please e-mail them to me at cynthia@pubsecalliance.com so I can share them with our group, which now numbers over 500 police associations.
The Supreme Court will issue its ruling this summer.
The article below appeared in today’s New York Times. It’s also worth checking out this accompanying op-ed on the case written by the paper’s Editorial Board.
Supreme Court Seems Poised to Deal Unions a Major Setback
By Adam Liptak
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed poised on Monday to deliver a severe blow to organized labor.
The justices appeared divided along familiar lines during an extended argument over whether government workers who choose not to join unions may nonetheless be required to help pay for collective bargaining. The court’s conservative majority appeared ready to say that such compelled financial support violates the First Amendment.
Collective bargaining, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said, is inherently political when the government is the employer, and issues like merit pay, promotions and classroom size are subject to negotiation.
The best hope for a victory for the unions had rested with Justice Antonin Scalia, who has written and said things sympathetic to their position. But he was consistently hostile on Monday.
“The problem is that everything that is bargained for with the government is within the political sphere,” he said.
The court’s four liberal members were on the defensive, asking questions about whether there is good reason to overturn a 1977 precedent allowing the fees and potentially unraveling tens of thousands of collective bargaining agreements. They added that a ruling against the unions could affect compelled fees paid to bar associations by lawyers and to public universities by students.
The case was brought by 10 California teachers who said they were being forced to subsidize activities with which they disagree.
Should the teachers’ argument prevail, public-sector unions across the nation, already under political pressure, could lose tens of millions of dollars and find their effectiveness diminished.
Unions say the teachers’ First Amendment argument is a ruse. Nonmembers are already entitled to refunds of payments spent on political activities like advertising to support a political candidate. Collective bargaining is different, the unions say, adding that the plaintiffs are seeking to reap the benefits of such bargaining without paying their fair share of the cost.
The larger threat, the unions and their supporters say, is that a decision in the plaintiffs’ favor would encourage many workers who are perfectly happy with the work of their unions to make the economically rational decision to opt out of paying for it.
Limiting the power of public unions has long been a goal of conservative groups. Even before Monday’s argument, they had reason to be hopeful that their side would prevail in the case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, No. 14-915.
In 2014, the court stopped just short of overruling a foundational 1977 decision and declaring that government workers who choose not to join unions may not be forced to pay fees in lieu of dues.
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