JANUS v. AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES COUNCIL
Supreme Court of the United States, Alito, June 27, 2018,
First Amendment – Unions – It is a violation of the First Amendment to compel public employees to subsidize private speech by paying dues to a union against their will
(Dissent – Sotomayor – )
(Dissent – Kagan with Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor )
Facts:
Illinois’ Public Labor Relations Act required that once a union was voted on by a majority of employees in a bargaining unit, that union served as exclusive representative of all employees in that bargaining unit regardless of whether they joined the union or not. While the union is charged with protecting the interests of all employees in the unit, employees are free to join or not join. However, employees that do not join the union are still required to pay an “agency fee” to cover the union’s duties as collective-bargaining representative.
The AFSCME covers 35,000 public employees in Illinois.
The “agency fee” paid to the AFSCME was not strictly limited to collective bargaining, but also included: lobbying, social and recreational activities, advertising, membership meetings and conventions, litigation, and unspecified “services that may ultimately inure to the benefit of the members of the local bargaining unit.” The agency fee amounted to 78% of the standard union dues.
Mark Janus, one of the employees covered by the AFSCME, filed suit to avoid being forced to pay these fees because he disagrees with the AFSCME’s “public policy positions” as well as collective bargaining decisions that do “not appreciate the current fiscal crises in Illinois and does not reflect his best interests or the interests of Illinois citizens.”
When Janus’ suit was dismissed in the lower courts, he requested review by the Supreme Court.
Held: The Supreme Court held that it was a violation of the First Amendment to force public employees to pay money to a union who did not represent their views.
Freedom of Speech – Freedom of Speech “includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.”
Freedom of Speech – Forcing individual to subsidize the speech of other private speakers raises “similar First Amendment concerns.”
Freedom of Speech – “Because the compelled subsidization of private speech seriously impinges on First Amendment rights, it cannot be casually allowed.”
From the Case: Two arguments were put before the Court to justify charging a fee to non-members: that unions would fail to represent non-members and that non-members could act as “free riders.” The Court rejected both arguments, finding that it’s no more difficult for the union to bargain for non-members than members and that “we do not see any reason to treat the free-rider interest any differently in the agency-fee context than in any other First Amendment context. We therefore hold that agency fees cannot be upheld on free-rider grounds.”
Unions – Instead of charging all employees a fee, a union that would normally provide services for members of the bargaining unit such as representation during grievance proceedings could require nonmembers “to pay for that service or could be denied union representation altogether.”