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Under California law, public employees who choose not to join unions must pay a “fair share service fee,” also known as an “agency fee,” typically equivalent to the dues members pay. The fees, the law says, are meant to pay for some of the costs of collective bargaining, including “the cost of lobbying activities.” More than 20 states have similar laws.
Government workers who are not members of unions have long been able to obtain refunds for the political activities of unions, like campaign spending. The case the court ruled on Tuesday, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, No. 14-915, asked whether such workers must continue to pay for any union activities, including negotiating for better wages and benefits. A majority of the justices had seemed inclined to say no.
Relying on a 1977 Supreme Court precedent, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, upheld the requirement that the objecting teachers pay fees. Tuesday’s announcement, saying only that “the judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court,” upheld that ruling and set no new precedent.
The unions defending the compulsory fees said the teachers’ First Amendment arguments were a ruse. Collective bargaining is different from spending on behalf of a candidate, the unions said. They said the plaintiffs were seeking to reap the benefits of such bargaining without paying their fair share of the cost.
Limiting the power of public unions has long been a goal of conservative groups, and they seemed very close to victory when the case was argued in January.
In 2014, the court stopped just short of overruling the foundational 1977 decision and declaring that government workers who choose not to join unions may not be forced to pay fees in lieu of dues. In the 1977 decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the Supreme Court made a distinction between two kinds of compelled payments.
Forcing nonmembers to pay for a union’s political activities violates the First Amendment, the court said. But it is constitutional, the court added, to require nonmembers to help pay for the union’s collective bargaining efforts to prevent freeloading and ensure “labor peace.”
- From Scotusblog: Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.
