The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard a challenge to a decades-old precedent authorizing public-sector unions to collect fees from workers who refuse to join the union but benefit from collective bargaining.
The court's liberals seemed firmly planted on the union side, with Justice Elena Kagan saying that the plaintiffs' argument "would radically restructure the way workplaces across the country are run."
Some conservative justices, in contrast, seemed open to the challenge, which contends that the "agency fees" the state allows the union to collect from public employees violate the First Amendment by compelling them to subsidize bargaining positions with which they may disagree.
"I'm talking about whether or not a union can take money from an employee who objects to the union's position on fundamental political grounds," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, referring, for instance, to a younger worker who might disagree with a union's decision to focus on protecting pensions.
"In an era where government is getting bigger and bigger…this is becoming more and more of an important issue to more people," he said.
The case could further hurt unions fighting to maintain ground in states grappling with financial woes.
Paul Smith, the lawyer representing the union position, said any burden on the objecting employees "arises only because somebody has chosen to come take this job working for the state on terms the state offers."
The union position received a surprisingly sympathetic hearing from Justice Antonin Scalia, who in other cases has joined with conservatives against organized labor's position.
The plaintiffs' lawyer, William Messenger of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, described the issue as the government compelling individuals to support "lobbying" officials for causes they oppose.
Justice Scalia, however, repeatedly framed the case under precedents that distinguish between the government's function of regulating public conduct, where it is constrained by constitutional protections, and its role as an employer, where it holds much of the discretion private employers have in managing the workplace.
"There are some private employers who think they're better off with a closed shop and they just want to deal with one union," Justice Scalia said. "Why can't the government have the same interest?"Read the rest of the story HERE and listen to Charles Krauthammer's take on this issue below:
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