Union Funding Targeted in Fast-Track Appeal to High Court
National Law Journal
Union Funding Targeted in Fast-Track Appeal to High Court
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A decision in the health care case, King v. Burwell, could come any day now. But Carvin, who argued King, and the Center for Individual Rights also hope the high court will take up their First Amendment challenge to a critical funding source for unions: agency shop "fair share" fees for public employees.
Carvin and the center represent 10 California teachers and the Christian Educators Association International in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. They are asking the justices to overrule its seminal 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.
Abood allows unions to charge nonmembers, whom unions have a legal duty to represent, for expenses related to collective bargaining but not for political or ideological activities. Government unions today represent more than one-third of government workers, compared to private-sector unions with less than 7 percent representation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Friedrichs petition contends that state agency shop laws, which require public employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment, violate freedom of speech and association. It argues that collective bargaining between the government and public employee unions necessarily involves political speech. Twenty-four states have agency shop laws.
The petition also argues that it violates the First Amendment to require employees to opt out of expenses unrelated to collective bargaining.
Carvin and the center fast-tracked the Friedrichs case through the lower federal courts in a deliberate strategy to get the issue to the Supreme Court. They asked the trial court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to rule against their clients on the basis of the pleadings—no trial, no oral arguments.
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