Janus court decision is big win for Californians

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees decision struck a strong blow for freedom, not just for public employees, but all Americans. This is especially true for Californians.

The 5-4 majority decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, reversed the high court’s 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. Abood had upheld the power of unions to mandate union dues, provided those dues were used only for collective bargaining, not direct political advocacy.

“Abood was wrongly decided and is now overruled,” thundered the Janus decision. “It was also decided when public-sector unionism was a relatively new phenomenon. Today, however, publicsector union membership has surpassed that in the private sector, and that ascendency corresponds with a parallel increase in public spending.”

That’s as concise a summary as you’ll get of how public-employee unions manipulated the system to significantly expand state spending on their pay and pensions. So much so that the state’s balance sheet — when including pensions and retiree health care for state workers — is now $250 billion in the red.

Even worse, more than half our 482 cities also are out of fiscal balance with three of our cities recently seeking bankruptcy protection. Read your local papers and you’ll find that almost every local government and school district in the state is cutting services to pay for the pension costs of decades past. No wonder the Golden State’s taxes are higher than anywhere in the country.

Union defenders of the mandatory dues for collective bargaining maintained that doing so was nonpolitical, being only concerned with pay and working conditions of all employees. Alito ably rebutted that, writing, “To the contrary, union speech covers critically important and public matters such as the State’s budget crisis, taxes, and collective bargaining issues related to education, child welfare, healthcare, and minority rights.”

He must have had California in mind on that one. Giving public employees pay and benefits packages so high they sharply reduce services for constituents, while risking bankruptcy and virtually guaranteeing higher taxes, obviously impacts everyone in the state.

To cite one example, the recently enacted California budget allocates $9 billion just for pension payments. Janus should make it easier to find solutions to the pension and retiree medical crises. Just as important, the decision should increase the chances we can enact sensible reforms to the state’s education system, such as performance pay for the best teachers to improve test scores for students — often minorities — in the lowest-performing schools.

Janus does not mean the end of public-employee unions. Indeed, it will encourage them to actually work for the benefit of their members, and all Californians, instead of going off on political tangents. As Janus noted, “Experience shows that unions can be effective even without agency fees.”

How are these unions reacting? Not well. A slew of legislation and budget trailer bills have already surfaced in an attempt to anticipate this historic sea change. Union leaders will not go quietly, as their slush fund that has garnered them political dominance is in jeopardy.

Janus also upholds the grand American principle of free speech — which means you don’t rob others to pay for your own free speech. The high court found, “The First Amendment is violated when money is taken from nonconsenting employees for a public-sector union; employees must choose to support the union before anything is taken from them.”