Posted on 01/10/2016 2:19:26 PM PST by Kaslin
Monday the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a case that could bring freedom from forced union fees to teachers and other public employees across the country.
In Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, Rebecca Friedrichs is asking for the right to choose whether to pay a labor union. Because California isn’t a right-to-work state, she has to pay nearly $1,000 per year in union fees in order to teach.
Those mandatory fees, the legal reasoning goes, are permissible because they cover costs CTA, CTA’s local chapter, and the National Education Association incur representing nonmembers. Forced union fees cannot be spent on politics.
But Friedrichs believes all teachers union activities - not just their open campaigning for left-wing causes and candidates - are political. As a result, she argues, making teachers pay unions violates First Amendment protections against compelled political speech.
Public-sector union bargaining over pay, benefits, and work conditions is inherently political because it always involves taxpayer money, public employees, and government services. Despite recognizing this, Supreme Court precedent treats “labor peace” as more important than workers’ free speech rights.
If the Friedrichs case prompts the Court to overturn its 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education decision, millions of public employees will gain the freedom to choose whether to pay a union.
Under the status quo, if you’re a teacher or government employee living in one of 23 states without public-sector right-to-work, you can:
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy recently talked about Friedrichs v. CTA with Ms. Friedrichs and two of the other plaintiffs, if you’re interested in learning more about their fight to restore their free speech rights:
Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association
Teachers union officials are, as you’d expect, furious at Friedrichs for threatening their flow of mandatory fees. The vitriol they’re lobbing at Friedrichs and her lawyers is as predictable (“Kochs!!!”) as it is dishonest.
A win for Friedrichs wouldn’t end public-sector unions. It wouldn’t restrict in any way the ability of public teachers or other government employees to organize, join, or support a union, despite breathless union warnings otherwise.
Still, union leaders will make every effort to muddy the waters at the Supreme Court.
If you’re bored Monday, try counting the ways NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia (2015 pay: $416,633) and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten (2015 pay: $497,118) insist teachers should be forced to pay unions — for their own good.
I’m helping the Mackinac Center cover the Friedrichs case this month. For the latest, visit mackinac.org/friedrichs.
A ruling in Friedrichs v. CTA is expected in June.
Basically the same Court that issued Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005).
Destroyed my monitor over that statement...
Oh, dear - this would certainly be a step backward for American Marxism/Leninism.
Did they clear this with his excellency.
Not if John Roberts has anything to say about it. All we need is a few redefinitions, a few statements about states rights (as long as it's convenient) and (Voila!)...status quo.
He did not agree with everything from the left and you know it
But on the biggest cases which served the left, he delivered for them.
The court may think it’s in their interest to give the Right, a win, if only a small one, lest Trump and Cruz gain even more support.
excellent point
Just the most important one.
Forced union dues = extortion. It ain’t complicated.
One could only hope. However I have little confidence in Kennedy and Roberts both being good little boys at the same time.
THIS Supreme Court?
Bwahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!
This is why I want Cruz to the Supreme Court more than as president.
$1000 per year per teacher. Crime does pay!
It is the job of state sovereignty-respecting justices to do the following when they decide cases. Justices are supposed to have a look at what the Constitution says, if anything, about a particular issue, union fees for teachers in this example.
And in this case since the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect unions, the Founding States had made the 10th Amendment to clarify that the Constitutions silence about issues like unions means that such issues are automatically and uniquely state power issues.
So it is ultimately up to the legal majority voters of a given state to decide if teachers in that state should be forced to pay union dues imo.
The problem with this conclusion is that we cannot expect an honest interpretation of the Constitution from post-FDR era anti-state sovereignty justices.
In fact, regardless if justices say that union fees for teachers are constitutional or unconstitutional, by doing so are actually hurting state sovereignty by ignoring that it is ultimately up to the voters of a given state to make such decisions as previously mentioned.
An old professor of mine at Ferris State was probably the start of this. He never spoke of it in class but shortly after I graduated I read that he was the named plaintiff in a US Supreme Court case to prevent unions from using dues for certain union political activities.
He wasn’t a great teacher, but I gained a solid amount of respect for him after that.
He’d only be 54 after 2 terms, he could ably serve 20+ years on the Court after his successor appoints him to it. ;)
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