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WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court dealt a big blow Wednesday to the unions. By a vote of 5 to 4, with the most conservative judges of the majority, the court ruled that government workers who choose not to join a union are not required to help pay for the collective bargaining.
Forcing these workers to fund trade union activities violated the First Amendment, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority. "We conclude that this arrangement violates the freedom of speech rights of non-members by forcing them to subsidize private speeches on matters of public interest," he writes.
The decision means that public sector unions across the country, already under political pressure, could lose tens of millions of dollars and see their effectiveness diminished.
"We recognize that the loss of payments by non-members can result in uncomfortable short-term transition costs for unions, and may require unions to make adjustments to attract and retain members." Wrote Judge Alito. "But we must weigh these disadvantages against the considerable profits that the unions have received" over the years.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch echoed the majority view, which overturned a precedent of four decades.
Judge Elena Kagan summed up her dissent from the bench, a sign of deep disagreement.
"There is no opinion today," she writes. "The majority is overturning a decision rooted in the law of this nation – and in its economic life – for more than 40 years."
"As a result," she wrote, "this prevents the American people, acting through their state and local authorities, from making important choices about the governance of the workplace. by arming the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes the judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy. "
Judges Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent.
The majority based its decision on the First Amendment, saying it required payments to unions negotiating with government forces workers to approve political messages that might contradict their beliefs.
Unions say the reasoning is flawed. Non-members are already entitled to reimbursement of payments spent on political activities, such as advertising to support a political candidate.
Collective bargaining is different, say the unions, and workers should not be free to reap the benefits of such bargaining without paying their fair share of costs.
The decision could encourage many workers who are perfectly satisfied with the work of their unions to make the economically rational decision not to pay the price.
[[[[Learn more about the effects of the decision on organized work.]
President Trump took Twitter to congratulate the ruling, saying it would be a "big loss for the coffers of Democrats!"
Limiting the power of public unions has long been a goal of conservative groups. They seemed ready to succeed at the Supreme Court in 2016, when a majority of judges seemed ready declare that the fees were unconstitutional.
[[[[Learn more about the network of conservative donors that fueled the case.]
But Judge Antonin Scalia died shortly after the previous argument, and that ended in a stalemate of 4 to 4. The new case, which had been filed in 2015, was waiting behind the scenes and soon reached the Supreme Court. Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, appointed by President Trump to the Supreme Court, voted with the majority.
The new case, Janus c. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, No. 16-1466, was introduced by Mark Janus, a child support specialist who works for the state government of the United States. ;Illinois. He sued the union, saying that he did not agree with his positions and should not be forced to pay fees to support his work.
Wednesday's decision overturned the court's 1977 decision in Abood c. Detroit Board of Education, which had made a distinction between two types of forced payments. Forcing non-members to pay for the political activities of a union violated the First Amendment, the court said. But it was constitutional, the court added, to require non-members to help pay the union's collective bargaining efforts to prevent long-distance loading and ensure "labor peace".
The new ruling overturned an Illinois law that required government employees to choose not to join a union to pay their proportionate share of the costs of the collective bargaining process, the administration of contracts and contracts. issues relating to wages, hours and other working conditions. More than 20 states have laws that require such "agency fees".
According to Judge Alito, workers like Mr. Janus have been charged with about 78% of the dues paid by union members.
"Abood was poorly reasoned," wrote Judge Alito. "This has led to practical problems and abuse, it is inconsistent with other First Amendment cases and has been undermined by more recent decisions."
The distinction established in the Abood case – between the political expenses of a union and other activities – is untenable and unenforceable, added Judge Alito. Taken together, he said, these factors justified a derogation from the principle of stare decisis, in Latin to "stick to decided things".
Judge Alito wrote that the "labor peace" did not justify the forced payments allowed by the Abood judgment, stating that there was "no evidence that the imagined pandemonium would occur if the agency fees were not allowed ".
Free riding can be a bad metaphor, added Judge Alito. Janus "strongly opposes this stowaway label," writes Judge Alito. "He argues that he's not a free runner on a bus to a destination that he wants to reach, but more like a shanghaied person for an unwanted trip." "
In dissent, Judge Kagan wrote that "the majority subverts all the known principles of stare decisis".
Citing the views of Justice Alito's majority that paved the way for Wednesday's decision, she said the alleged erosion of legal support for Abood was "priming".
"I do not like a decision?", Wrote Judge Kagan. "Throw some free reviews into a few opinions and a few years later, say them as" special justifications "to reverse a precedent.
"The majority," wrote Judge Kagan, "canceled Abood for no exceptional or special reason, but because she never liked the decision. He canceled Abood because he wanted. "
More broadly, she wrote, the decision was one of several in which the Conservatives abused the protections of freedom of expression of the Constitution to achieve political goals. "The First Amendment was for better things," she wrote. "It was not a matter of undermining but of protecting democratic governance – including the role of public sector unions".
Justice Alito wrote that the unions survived in contexts where forced payments of non-members are not required. Only 27% of federal workers, for example, are members of a union, he writes.
Judge Kagan replied that the badogy with Illinois and other states was unacceptable. "First," she wrote, "far fewer federal employees pay dues than they voted for a union that would represent them, indicating that the federal sector is in fact dominated by". free-riding. And secondly, this sector is not typical of other public workers. Negotiations in the federal sphere are limited; most notable, it does not extend to wages and benefits. "
Wednesday's decision was unlikely to be particularly disturbing, Judge Alito wrote, "because public sector collective agreements are usually short-lived".
Judge Kagan challenged that. "The majority of contracts have been canceled across the country," Judge Kagan wrote, adding that the decision "wreak havoc on well-established legislative and contractual provisions."
In New York alone, she wrote, 144 contracts with 97 public sector unions provide for agency fees and will need to be renegotiated.
It is unlikely that the decision will have a direct effect on unionized employees of private companies because the first amendment restricts the government's action and not private conduct. But unions now account for only 6.5 per cent of private sector employees, down from the early 1980s, and the strength of the labor movement is currently concentrated in the public sector.
Wednesday's decision dealt a final blow to public unions, saying that workers must affirmatively agree to support them.
"Neither agency fees, nor any other payment to the syndicate may be deducted from the salary of a non-member, and no further attempt may be made to collect such a payment, unless the payment is not made. employee agrees to pay, "writes Judge Alito.
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