I’d like to believe they will vote against unions.
Then again, I was lead to believe they’d vote against fag marriage and against obamacare.
Same here, I think they’re sandbaggin’ us.
Has the Fraud been too busy partying over dead Americans to make a phone call to his BFF shady adoption Chief “Justice” Roberts to have this go the way the leftists’ god-king wants?
More at The Hill:
Conservative justices on the Supreme Court on Monday appeared deeply skeptical of requiring public employees to pay union dues as a condition of their employment.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who could be the critical swing vote in the case, cast doubt on a law in California that requires public sector workers to opt out of paying union fees for collective bargaining.
Unions say such laws are necessary to avoid a “free rider” problem where non-members benefit from deals that are negotiated on their behalf.
But Kennedy said that under that logic, there would be nothing to stop California from requiring every state employee to donate 1 percent of his or her salary to the governor’s election campaign.
“No one thinks, realistically, that’s a voluntary decision to give money,” he said. “There’s only one purpose behind that kind of requirement, which is to inflate the governor’s political war chest, just like the only purpose behind this is to, through inadvertence and neglect, inflate the union’s war chest by people who really have not made a voluntary decision to do so.”
The lawsuit - which was filed by 10 teachers in California, including Rebecca Friedrichs, and the Center for Individual Rights - poses a major threat the political power of labor unions, which have long been allies of Democrats.
Union membership is heavily concentrated in the public sector, giving the labor movement a crucial stronghold of support.
Should the high court rule against fee requirements, the financial power of unions could rapidly erode.
The plaintiffs in the case specifically argue that that requiring every public school teacher in California to annually renew, in writing, his or her objection to subsidizing the unions’ political agenda violates their First Amendment rights.
“As to requiring people to give money to which they don’t wish to give, Thomas Jefferson said that was sinful and tyrannical, James Madison famously said, requiring three pence is the thing,” said Friedrich’s attorney Michael Carvin. “So it’s not at all something that we’ve invented.”
Chief Justice Roberts appeared to agree with Carvin, who argued that the court should at least require unions to have their employees affirmatively consent to union fees instead of requiring them affirmatively opt out of them.
Though David Frederick, the attorney representing the other unions in the case, argued it’s easy for a person to check a box opting out of union fees, Roberts said, “it’s also easier for a person to check a box to say they opt-in.”
The problem before the court, Roberts said, is whether individuals can be compelled to support political views that they disagree with.
Though unions have argued they will lose membership if employees are forced to opt-in rather than out, Kennedy said the unions should be able to convince employees to join their union.
Liberals on the court, meanwhile, appeared to have qualms about overruling a 1977 decision known as Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which had upheld requiring non-union members to pay fees for collective bargaining activities.
Justice Elena Kagan told Carvin that he carries a heavy burden in asking the court to overrule Abood.
“What special justification are you offering here?” she asked.
Carvin responded that Abood should be overruled because it’s erroneous, drawing a sharp response from liberal Justice Stephen Breyer.
“I can’t find a basic principle that’s there that’s erroneous as in these major cases that we have overruled,” he said.
Though the California Teachers Association has argued that it could not survive without these union fees from non-members, the union’s attorney California Solicitor General Edward Dumont acknowledged during oral arguments that he could not prove that to be the case because there was no fact-finding to that effect.
“So there’s a presumption in the question posed which is that it can survive, but we don’t know that factually?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the court’s liberal wing, asked Dumont.
Dumont said the state would prefer not to take the risk.
But Justice Antonin Scalia said it’s the job of the opponents to show that they need the non-member fees to survive.
“You’re the one that’s saying we need to do this because otherwise it won’t survive,” Scalia said. “It seems to me the burden is on you to say why that’s so.”
In a statement following the 80-minute arguments Monday, The National Consumers League said the case was “handpicked by special, powerful anti-worker interests” who want the court to overrule the longstanding precedent of Abood.
“The National Consumers League believes that Abood is based on the constitutional principle that those covered by a union contract should be required to pay their share of fees,” the organization said. “When employees elect a union to represent them, everyone who benefits from a negotiated contract should contribute to the costs of securing that contract, even those who might not agree with every union position.”
The Small Business Legal Center, however, disagreed.
“The First Amendment protects freedom of association,” the center’s Executive Director Karen Harned said in a statement.
“Forcing an employee to associate with a union and surrender part of her income to support its political activities is a clear violation of that constitutional protection.”
That seems to work fine when the central issue is burning American flags or peddling pornography. Not so well when the issue is being forced to financially support leftwing hyperpartisan politics.
Unions should be illegal.