Free Republic

The two sides in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the closely watched U.S. legal case in which a 4-4 U.S. Supreme Court barely upheld a 39-year-old precedent regarding the constitutionality of forced union fees as a job condition in the government sector on March 29, seemed bitterly divided. And they were, for the most part. But on one important matter in Friedrichs, by the time oral arguments were heard in January, there was no longer any dispute between the plaintiffs – 10 independent-minded Golden State educators – and the respondents – the officers of the National Education Association (NEA) union...

In an op-ed published this week regarding a landmark legal case about to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law and part-time pundit, gets one important thing right. As Chemerinsky says, the High Court’s 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education — the precedent that is being challenged in the case at hand — is “based” on the “simple . . . premise” that employees who are subject to “exclusive” union bargaining, but choose not to be members, “benefit . . . from the union in...

On Monday, January 11 the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear expanded oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case brought by 10 Golden State public school teachers. Friedrichs is directly based on precedents set by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s last two Supreme Court victories, Knox v. SEIU (2012) and Harris v. Quinn (2014). Friedrichs challenges the constitutionality of public sector forced unionism, which was deemed constitutional in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education in 1977. A decision in Friedrichs that overturns Abood would prohibit public sector union bosses nationwide from compelling employees...