SCOTUS deals a blow to Unions..

[deerwhacker444]

The Democrats will be reeling from this for years..

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday that non-union public-sector workers who are nevertheless represented by a union for bargaining purposes cannot be required to pay union fees. Janus v. AFSCME hinged on the case of Mark Janus, a child-support specialist in Illinois who argued that he should not be forced to pay fees to his union. Existing law, as determined by the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Department of Education, states that all employees must pay a fee to account for the benefits of collective bargaining that unions offer. Janus argued, however, that the law violates his right to free speech, because it requires him to fund an organization that speaks on his behalf and is designed to shift policy on salary, benefits, and pensions. This ruling is expected to devastate labor unions, which rely on non-member dues to stay afloat. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, and was joined by Justices Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy, and Gorsuch; Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan dissented. Kagan, writing for the minority, wrote that the decision will have “large scale consequences,” and that “judicial disruption does not get any greater than what the court does today.”

 

[Dave70968]

Kagan, writing for the minority, wrote that the decision will have “large scale consequences,” and that “judicial disruption does not get any greater than what the court does today.”

You mean "large-scale consequences" like the union having to impress the non-members with the value of the service it provides, and convince them to join of their own free will? That kind of "disruption?"

What a damned shame.

 

[lasher]

finally a court with some big brass balls. i like it

 

[rc508pir]

A jaw dropping decision.

 

[Okie4570]

finally a court with some big brass balls. i like it

Ironically, the ladies were in the minority.

 

[SlugSlinger]

Thank you Mr. Trump for the conservative addition to the Supreme Court. We can only hope and pray you get to add at least one or two more to this court.

Amazing difference with the conservative and liberal comments.
Liberals: It's ok to for unions to take money from people who don't agree with them.
Conservative: Unions are not entitled to any money from employees without their consent.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that government workers can’t be forced to contribute to labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining, dealing a serious financial blow to organized labor.

The court’s conservative majority scrapped a 41-year-old decision that had allowed states to require that public employees pay some fees to unions that represent them, even if the workers choose not to join.

The 5-4 decision fulfills a longtime wish of conservatives to get rid of the so-called fair share fees that non-members pay to unions in roughly two dozen states. Organized labor is a key Democratic constituency.

The court ruled that the laws violate the First Amendment by compelling workers to support unions they may disagree with.

“States and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from nonconsenting employees,” Justice Samuel Alito said in his majority opinion in the latest case in which Justice Neil Gorsuch, an appointee of President Donald Trump, provided a key fifth vote for a conservative outcome.

Trump himself tweeted his approval of the decision while Alito still was reading a summary of it from the bench.

“Big loss for the coffers of the Democrats!” Trump said in the tweet.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote of the big impact of the decision. “There is no sugarcoating today’s opinion. The majority overthrows a decision entrenched in this Nation’s law - and its economic life - for over 40 years. As a result, it prevents the American people, acting through their state and local officials, from making important choices about workplace governance. And it does so by weaponizing the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy.”

The court’s three other liberal justices joined the dissent.

The court split 4-4 the last time it considered the issue in 2016 following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Last year, unions strongly opposed Gorsuch’s nomination by Trump.

The unions say the outcome could affect more than 5 million government workers in about two dozen states and the District of Columbia.

The case involving Illinois state government worker Mark Janus is similar to the one the justices took up in 2016. At that time, the court appeared to be ready to overrule a 1977 high court decision that serves as the legal foundation for the fair share fees. But Scalia’s death left the court tied, and a lower court ruling in favor of the fees remained in place.

The unions argued that so-called fair share fees pay for collective bargaining and other work the union does on behalf of all employees, not just its members. More than half the states already have right-to-work laws banning mandatory fees, but most members of public-employee unions are concentrated in states that don’t, including California, New York and Illinois.

Labor leaders fear that not only will workers who don’t belong to a union stop paying fees, but that some union members might decide to stop paying dues if they could in essence get the union’s representation for free.

A recent study by Frank Manzo of the Illinois Public Policy Institute and Robert Bruno of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign estimated that public-sector unions could lose more than 700,000 members over time as a result of the ruling and that unions also could suffer a loss of political influence that could depress wages as well.

Alito acknowledged that unions could “experience unpleasant transition costs in the short term.” But he said labor’s problems pale in comparison to “the considerable windfall that unions have received...for the past 41 years.”

Billions of dollars have been taken from workers who were not union members in that time, he said.

“Those unconstitutional exactions cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely,” Alito wrote.

Kagan, reading a summary of her dissent in the courtroom, said unions only could collect money for the costs of negotiating terms of employment. “But no part of those fees could go to any of the union’s political or ideological activities,” she said.

The court’s majority said public-sector unions are not entitled to any money from employees without their consent.

https://apnews.com/0f83c64b1dd249de9ec89ab85235790a/Supreme-Court-deals-big-setback-to-labor-unions

 

[Dave70968]

Already being discussed in https://www.okshooters.com/threads/scotus-deals-a-blow-to-unions.261916/

 

[TerryMiller]

Already being discussed in https://www.okshooters.com/threads/scotus-deals-a-blow-to-unions.261916/

Dave, your link comes right back to this thread. Is there another that I've missed seeing?

 

[NikatKimber]

They were merged.

 

[TerryMiller]

They were merged.

Yeah, I just figured that out.

At any rate, yet another win for the conservative side.