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Posted on 06/28/2014 9:48:34 PM PDT by 11th_VA
Public-sector union bosses will have difficulty sleeping this weekend, as they await the Supreme Court’s disposition on Monday of what may be the surprise blockbuster of the term, Harris v. Quinn. The Court may well overrule a dubiously reasoned precedent from 1977—Abood v. Detroit Board of Education—that held that the First Amendment allows the government to condition a person’s employment in the public sector on that person’s paying fees to a union.
Public-sector unions, of course, have benefited massively from the coerced funding that Abood allows.
The unions’ worst nightmare became more vivid yesterday when Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer wrote opinions from the Court’s January calendar. That leaves Justice Alito as the only justice who has not yet written a lead opinion from that calendar. Alito has also written one fewer opinion for the term than any of the other justices. So it’s a very good bet that he was assigned to write in Harris.
Two years ago, in Knox v. SEIU, Alito wrote an excellent majority opinion that held that the First Amendment does not allow the government to authorize a public-sector union to require objecting nonmembers to pay a special fee for the purpose of financing the union’s political activities. As I discussed at the time, the Knox ruling was significant less for its specific holding than for the Court’s long-overdue awakening to what Alito aptly called “the critical First Amendment rights at stake.”
The Court in Knox did not “revisit … whether the Court’s former cases have given adequate recognition to the critical First Amendment rights at stake.” But it did observe that the free-rider arguments that those cases have relied on—i.e., preventing nonmembers from free-riding on the union’s collective-bargaining activities—“are generally insufficient to overcome First Amendment objections” and are “something of an anomaly.” So the Court’s ruling on Monday may be the occasion for correcting that anomaly.
This would effectively end unions.
But will the court try to ‘balance out’ its two conservative decisions with two liberal ones? This and Hobby Lobby?
We all know the Roberts court cares about its ‘reputation’ more than the constitution.
I still think Roberts is being blackmailed.
You know it.
That would be a good thing.
The faster and the sooner the better.
The unions are the ones who are stopping employees from ever being fired .. even those who commit crimes are not allowed to be fired. This is the major problem with the IRS situation. All this corruption and crime and nobody can be fired.
NO WONDER NOTHING IS EVER ABLE TO CHANGE. We have the same employees in the govt .. and we cannot get rid of them even when they lie and cheat and steal from the taxpayer.
This has been my major complaint for years and years.
The law should be - NO UNIONS IN ANY PUBLIC SECTOR.
If businesses want to put up with the foolishness of unions, then they can pay the price.
And .. why should there be a special group within govt that GATHERS FUNDS FOR DEMOCRATS.
I used to work in Silicon Valley .. when it was UNION FREE. That’s when all the tech companies had their boom. I don’t know what happened, but initially the companies were exceeding the benefits the unions could provide. When that changed, Silicon Valley practically ended. I remember what it was like to have the unions always standing outside our parking entry .. handing us fliers and such.
I was against the unions then .. and I’m still against them today. Years ago, when employers treated their employees very badly, the unions did a great job of straightening that out .. but then they realized they had a gold mine (and so did the dems), and the race was on to unionize everything possible.
TIME FOR IT TO END. When that happens, it will be the end of the dem party’s power in this country. That can only be a good thing.
Union kaput! America becomes “a better place”. We can “change the world”. No more wage stealing gangstas.
About as much chance as the U. of Nevada of getting their speaking money back from the hildabeast.
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Amen, brother. But I don’t think it is going to end.
Don’t necessarily speak for me. Neither I nor you know when you say “the Roberts court cares about its ‘reputation’ more than the constitution” is anything more than your opinion.
Constitutional politics is not checkers, we don’t know what “poison pill” Roberts may have subvertly injected into nobamacare. I suspect his apparent favorable ruling will open up at minimum the “Origination” Clause and considering the dems failed to write in any separation, when one leg goes, so do all.
If you call it “reparations”, then you might have a chance ...
I don't think it would *end* them but it very probably would weaken them.Remember,Virginia is now solidly Rat because of its hundreds of thousands Federal paycheck recipients.
I read that Scalia will be the traitor on this one. His rationale is that at the time the Constitution was adopted, the ‘spoils’ system was legit. The fact that he will throw in with the four leftists on the Court who have nothing but contempt for the Constitution will be ignored since all that matters is that the left gets their nearly infinite funding.
Considering the Court’s recent free speech cases, I believe the unions should not be able to sleep tonight. The only issues are how broadly will the Court rule and the vote breakdown.
Source?
That’s why I used the term “effectively end” government unions.
So, we are in agreement.
And notice that no major media attention/time has been covering this potentially explosive pending decision.
While even FOX has devolved into deeming the Hobby Lobby case into some nebulous company vs “woman’s contraceptive rights” action, as opposed to their very specific objections to paying for two government mandated “post conception” abortion pharmaceuticals.
Abortion is not the same as contraceptives.
Tomorrow will be a very interesting day!
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