SCOTUS to consider First Amendment rights of public workers forced to pay for collective bargaining
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge by California school teachers who contend that a law forcing public employees to pay union fees for collective bargaining violates their First Amendment rights.
The court granted cert on Tuesday in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. The case “could be a blockbuster,” according to SCOTUSblog.
The teachers are urging the court to overrule Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, a 1977 decision that says public employees may be required to pay mandatory fees to unions for collective bargaining, but not for political or ideological activity.
The U.S. Supreme Court criticized but did not overrule the decision last year in Harris v. Quinn.
The California law requires teachers in most public schools to contribute to the union to subsidize collective bargaining expenses. It also requires teachers to help pay expenses unrelated to collective bargaining unless they affirmatively object on an annual basis.
The law applies to teachers in “agency shop” schools, which require teachers as a condition of employment to join the union or pay dues.
The cert petition (PDF) argues there is no meaningful First Amendment difference between advancing an ideological agenda through collective bargaining and advancing an ideological agenda through lobbying or campaign spending. Collective bargaining takes positions on ideological issues such as the right to strike and the desirability of unionism itself, the cert petition says.
“In this era of broken municipal budgets and a national crisis in public education, it is difficult to imagine more politically charged issues than how much money cash-strapped local governments should devote to public employees, or what policies public schools should adopt to best educate children,” the cert petition says. “Yet California compels petitioners to fund a very specific point of view on these pressing public questions.”
The New York Times has coverage of the cert grant here.
