Posted on 03/30/2012 1:41:06 PM PDT by Hunton Peck
A federal court on Friday struck down key parts of Gov. Scott Walker's controversial collective bargaining legislation, ruling that the state cannot prevent public employee unions from collecting dues and cannot require they recertify annually.
The collective bargaining bill, also known as Act 10, established a system in which most of the public unions were required to have a majority of their members vote every year to recertify. The law also took away some unions' rights to collect mandatory dues.
The court ruled that the state did not have the right to pick and choose which public unions could charge dues and how they would recertify.
"So long as the state of Wisconsin continues to afford ordinary certification and dues deductions to mandatory public safety unions with sweeping bargaining rights, there is no rational basis to deny those rights to voluntary general unions with severely restricted bargaining rights," the order read.
Gov. Scott Walker did not immediately have a response Friday.
The ruling: http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/329900-read-the-federal-ruling-striking-parts-of.html#document/p1
That one won’t last. Ridiculous decision.
It is politically unpalatable for the State to attempt to apply such rules to Police and Fire unions. The Judge fully well knows this.
The Valid legal point the judge makes is that the Constitutional equal protection under the law (14th Amendment) does not allow a state to create a law that affects one group without affecting all groups in the same manner. Had the law applied to ALL unions, it would be constitutionally acceptable, but because it singles out "General" unions for it's provisions, it is not.
The Wisconsin Legislature will either have to bite the bullet and pass a law that applies to ALL unions, including Police and Fire, or they will have to give up on the idea as legally/politically un-do-able.
there is no rational basis
Compelling state interest
Penumbras and emanations
Arbitrary and capricious
Congressional laws passed by democrat majorities are assumed Constitutional. State laws passed by republican majorities are not.
If you have not, be sure to educate your kids and grand kids on the war the Left is making on our civilization.
That argument would make sense only if the union’s “right” forcibly to take money from an employee were somehow a right of the employee whose salary is being taken.
Funny, but not at all surprising, that there seems to have been no challenge to the differing “rights” of different unions to compel membership in itself — only to their “right” forcibly to take dues from their members.
Added to the list.
You should be careful with what you label “leftist judicial code.” It may well be that the legal rationale for reversing Obamacare relies specifically on the exact concepts of a “rational legal basis,” “compelling state interest,” and even “substantive due process.”
Those concepts were used extensively in the arguments against the ACA earlier this week.
Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Bill Struck Down in part ping
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
Nonsense, you're comparing apples to oranges. And welcome to Free Republic.
You make good points.
The law, with all it’s good intents, was flawed, and that it was because to enact a better law was politically more difficult.
The law tried to set different standards for some unions of the same class - public employee unions - instead of applying all the new standards to all unions in that class.
The law tried to do incrementally, a few public employee unions at a time, what most likely can only be done towards all the state public employee unions at once, or not at all.
Even the state GOP did not want to put the state public safety employees’ and their unions against them. Leaving them out of the law helped put the constitutionality of the law in question.
BTW, I don't know where you live but I live just a few miles south of what we call the Cheddar Curtain (the border of IL and WI). Watching the Fire Department labor unions gives me the reasonable idea that they are nowhere NEAR as popular as police unions in Wisconsin. If the Fire unions strike, however, the public safety (life, limb and property is certainly jeopardized). Those fire unions had thugs in their ranks threatening harm to Dubya supporters during the summer of 2000.
The 14th Amendment Equal Protection is not absolute and, in any event, makes no mention of equal protection for labor unions. Indeed, until the 1935 federal Wagner Ac, many labor organizations were routinely regarded by courts as "criminal syndicates" eligible for suppression by injunction. Today, a rational basis for unequal protection should suffice and either the Appellate Court or the SCOTUS will likely so rule on appeal.
Exactly right, and I do not know what can be done about it. The 14th amendment has got to be the most mischievous section of our Constitution. On the basis of it, they've justified Abortion, Kicked God out of every aspect of government, Allowed a non "natural born citizen" to be elected as President, and myriad other forms of destructive interpretation.
It is badly written, badly understood, and not even really properly ratified. It is something which should have been done after the passions of the Civil war had fully cooled, because the Haste in which it was written and ratified has come back to bite us in the butt many times.
The one thing which it supposedly guarantees (Equal protection under the law) is one of the most violated aspects of it. Rich people can hire the very best lawyers, and thereby get away with crimes for which poor people go to prison. Poor people and Rich people get very different versions of Justice.
I propose that in order to comply with the requirements of "Equal protection under the law" we make it so that everyone has to use a public defender! Socialize the Lawyers! :)
I do not doubt that a different Judge may have ruled differently, and in such a way as to hold the law as valid. I'm just saying I understand the legal argument of this Liberal judge who has blocked it.
but with your arguement everyone would need to be paid the same.. spereate but equal applies to people not to govt employe groups
my argument does not require “pay” to be the “same” as “pay” was not set to be “the same” by the law that was defeated on appeal
what would need to be “the same” (to all state employee unions), under that law were ONLY the specific standards being set by the law
instead, those standards that were being set by the law were being attempted, by the law, to apply to only part of the class ‘state unionized public employees’ and not the whole class
I got halfway through the opinion and the judge was still talking about how it’s OK for the State to make a distinction bertween ‘public safety’ and ‘general’ employees!
I guess further on he makes his point.
A fourth of the opinion seems to be him sniping about how the unions that didn’t support the Governor’s election are the ones restricted.
But that that doesn’t have anything to do with the ruling of course LOL!
I give up trying to make sense of the juvenile’s opinion...
Easy solution. The State should charge all public unions for the service of dues deductions and distributions.
“spereate but equal applies to people not to govt employe groups”
by your logic members of govt employee groups are not “people”, but by law they are
second; “separate but equal” is not the issue, “equal protection” is
and even when recognizing “equal protection” as applying to “people”, it is clearly understood that the law often makes categories (classes) of people to differentiate who specifically a certain law applies to - “minor children”, “married persons”, “medical provider”, “minister of religion” - etc., etc.; whereby what constitutionality requires, for the sake of “equal protection” is that all persons in the class are accorded equal treatement
but the law in question does not set equal treatment (equal in the application of just those standards the law was setting) for all state unionized government emplyees, only some
politically there was a lot of rationale for doing that, though in retrospect possibly harder bargaining with the specific unions at issue is the tactic that was on better legal ground
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