{"id":3532,"date":"2018-07-25T15:04:58","date_gmt":"2018-07-25T19:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/?p=3532"},"modified":"2025-02-05T11:10:04","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T16:10:04","slug":"the-us-supreme-court-deals-a-tough-blow-to-organized-labor-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/the-us-supreme-court-deals-a-tough-blow-to-organized-labor-movement.html","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Deals A Tough Blow To Organized Labor Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In its June 27, 2018 opinion in <em>Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31<\/em> authored by Justice Alito, a divided U.S. Supreme Court resolved a long-standing battle over the ability of public sector unions to charge non-members \u201cfair share\u201d or \u201cagency fees\u201d to cover the cost of collective bargaining and other representational activities. In a major defeat for unions, the Court struck down these mandatory union fees as impermissible violations of nonmembers\u2019 First Amendment speech rights. While the decision is limited to union fee practices in the <em>public sector<\/em>, it portends to have significant consequences for the private sector labor movement as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Agency Fees Pre-Janus:<\/strong> Since the Court\u2019s 1997 ruling in <em>Abood v. Detroit Board of Education<\/em>, the status of agency fees assessed against employees who opt not to join their representative labor union has been the subject of ongoing debate. The <em>Abood<\/em> case was the first time the Court squarely addressed the tension between nonmembers\u2019 First Amendment Rights and compulsory union dues in the public sector. Consistent with its prior rulings concerning private sector union fees, the Court concluded that any portion of compulsory fees attributable to contract negotiations and administrative expenses was permissible because employees who elected not to join the union nevertheless benefited from the union\u2019s representation activities, and agency fees were justified as a way to eliminate these \u201cfree riders.\u201d However, the <em>Abood<\/em> Court reasoned that forcing nonmembers to fund any portion of fees attributable to the union\u2019s support of ideological or political causes that they may not agree with would be an impermissible impingement of First Amendment speech rights.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, the Court has been called upon to consider the continued constitutional viability of the agency fees assessment sanctioned by <em>Abood<\/em>. In <em>Harris v. Quinn<\/em>, the Court struck down on First Amendment grounds mandatory agency fees assessed to home health aides, but that ruling was limited to that particular class of employees at issue in that case. Two years later, the Court appeared to be poised to overrule <em>Abood<\/em> in <em>Friedrichs v. California Teachers Ass\u2019n<\/em>, an action by teachers challenging agency fees, but the unexpected death of Justice Scalia derailed that effort. Instead, the court issued a <em>per curiam<\/em> opinion upholding mandatory agency fees.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/the-us-supreme-court-deals-a-tough-blow-to-organized-labor-movement.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading Supreme Court Deals A Tough Blow To Organized Labor Movement\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In its June 27, 2018 opinion in Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31 authored by Justice Alito, a divided U.S. Supreme Court resolved a long-standing battle over the ability of public sector unions to charge non-members \u201cfair share\u201d or \u201cagency fees\u201d to cover the cost of collective bargaining and other representational activities. In a major defeat [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,247],"tags":[],"coauthors":[139],"class_list":["post-3532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insights","category-labor-employment-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Supreme Court Deals A Tough Blow To Organized Labor Movement &#8212; July 25, 2018 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In its June 27, 2018 opinion in Janus v. 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