Supreme Court: Public unions can’t force nonmembers to pay dues

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that it was unconstitutional to allow public employee unions to require collective-bargaining fees from workers who choose not to join the union, a major blow for public employee unions.

The court, in a 5-to-4 decision, said the rule requires workers to give financial support to public policy positions they oppose.

“States and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from nonconsenting employees,” Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote for the majority. “. . . This procedure violates the First Amendment and cannot continue.”

It was a devastating, if expected, loss for public employee unions, a major player in Democratic Party politics. Major public employee unions pour millions into campaigns to bolster Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, and their members are steadfast participants in sophisticated get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day.

Now their resources will be diminished. The nation’s largest teacher union, the National Education Association, said it could lose as many as 200,000 members this year and is preparing to cut about $28 million from its budget.

President Donald Trump cast the decision as a political victory, tweeting: “Supreme Court rules in favor of nonunion workers who are now, as an example, able to support a candidate of his or her choice without having those who control the Union deciding for them. Big loss for the coffers of the Democrats!”

The ruling capped a yearslong effort by free speech advocates to forbid states from authorizing the fees.

The case concerns only public-sector unions.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement that the decision “abandons decades of common-sense precedent.” He added that “it will further empower the corporate elites in their efforts to thwart the aspirations of millions of working people standing together for a better life.”

Joining Alito in the opinion was Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Anthony Kennedy. It came just hours before Kennedy announced he would leave the court at the end of July.

Challengers asked the court to overturn a 1977 decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, that favored the unions. That ruling said states could allow public employee unions to collect fees from nonmembers to cover the costs of workplace negotiations over salaries and benefits but not the union’s political activities.

The unions say losing fees from nonmembers will be a heavy blow because there is no incentive for workers to pay for collective-bargaining representation that they could get free. More than 20 states, including California, allow what the unions like to call “fair-share” fees intended to prevent nonmembers from getting a “free ride.”

Alito wrote that such concerns were not enough to overcome the First Amendment violation.