Supreme Court majority is critical of compelled public employee union fees

Washington Compost ^ | 01/11/2016 | Robert Barnes

[E. Pluribus Unum]

A majority of the Supreme Court seemed ready Monday to agree with a group of California teachers who say it violates their First Amendment rights to be forced to pay dues to the state's teachers union.

A 40-year-old precedent allows states to permit unions to collect a so-called agency fee from non-members to support collective bargaining activities, and California is one of about 20 states that allow it.

Public employee unions say such fees are essential to their well-being, and that challenges to the arrangement are born of conservative efforts to weaken their strength. Liberal justices during an hour and a half of oral arguments said the challengers had not supplied the kind of evidence required for the court to overturn a precedent.

But the court's conservative majority in 2012 and 2014 expressed grave doubts about the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, and there seemed little reason after the oral arguments for unions to think the majority was not ready to now finish it off.

[Tupelo]

This decision will probably depend on the votes of Kennedy and Roberts. So it could go either way. In my opinion, the Union wins. But time will tell.

Thanks Presidents Bush and Bush.

[napscoordinator]

I can’t believe that they can take money out of a paycheck for this. The way I see it. The unions should represent those in the union and the individuals not in a union can represent themselves. How hard is that. Why make it mandatory?

[Quality_Not_Quantity]

The argument I used to hear was that certain union activities, like collectively bargaining for wages, benefited everyone involved, not just the unionists.

Other activities, like providing representation when a grievance was filed against one of their members, only benefitted the unionists, so the non-union employees shouldn’t have to pay for that service, or for the money that went for political fund-raising, or money sent to the National Headquarters, etc.

It always made sense to me.

[zeugma]

To all, For a full transcript of the oral arguments being discussed, click here. Unfortunately it's a PDF.