Supreme Court Ruling Allows Some Public Workers to 0pt 0ut of Union Fees

The Supreme Court ruled narrowly in the case, with the majority 5-4 opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. By STEVEN GREENHOUSE June 30, 2014

The Supreme Court dealt a limited blow to labor unions on Monday by ruling that some government employees did not have to pay any fees to the labor organizations representing them. But the court declined to strike down a decades-old precedent that required many public-sector workers to pay union fees.

Writing the majority 5-4 opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. concluded that there was a category of government employee — a partial public employee — who can opt out of joining a union and not be required to contribute dues to that labor group.

Justice Alito wrote that home-care aides who typically work for an ill or disabled person, with Medicaid paying their wages, should be classified as partial public employees and should not be treated the same way as public-school teachers or police officers who work directly for the government.

The court's decision was a partial, but not total win, for labor's critics. And while labor did sustain a defeat in this ruling, it did not amount to a crippling loss that unions had feared.

Graphic | Harris v. Quinn

If the court had overturned the precedent requiring many government workers to pay union fees, it could have greatly reduced the membership and treasuries of public-employee unions when they are already on the defensive in Wisconsin and many other states.

Justice Alito wrote that unions play such a limited role for "partial public employees" like home-care aides that these aides should not be required to pay union fees — indeed he wrote that such a requirement would violate the aides' First Amendment rights. He noted that states often set the wage levels for these workers and that unions often do not bargain collectively for them..

The case, Harris v. Quinn, was brought by eight Illinois workers who provided home health care to Medicaid recipients. They asked the court to overrule a 1977 decision that declared that government employees can be required to pay fees to unions for representing them and administering their contracts even if they disagree with the union's positions. The majority declined to overrule that foundational decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, although Justice Alito voiced strong discomfort with it.

Objecting to the so-called agency fees that the Abood ruling said teachers must pay, Justice Alito wrote in Monday's majority opinion, "Agency-fee provisions unquestionably impose a heavy burden on the First Amendment interests of objecting employees."

Illinois and more than 20 other states require government employees, whether or not they opt to join the union at their workplace, to pay "fair share" fees to finance the union's collective bargaining efforts to prevent freeloading and to ensure "labor peace." But the court in Abood and other cases held that workers could not be required to help pay for activities that were purely political, like a union's lobbying the legislature or campaigning for particular candidates.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation represented the Illinois workers and argued that Illinois was violating the First Amendment by requiring that government workers pay compulsory fees to unions even when they disagreed with the unions' positions. The foundation argued that most of what public-sector unions did was inherently political, partly because they rely on the government to pay their members' wages and benefits — and often lobby the government to increase their compensation.

But the Service Employees International Union, which represents the Illinois home-care aides, and the Obama administration urged the court to uphold the legality of "fair-share fees."

In Monday's decision, Harris v. Quinn, No. 11-681, Justice Alito noted that the service employees union received about $3.6 million in fees per year from home-care assistants in Illinois. The ruling reversed a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Justice Alito rebuffed the argument by the State of Illinois that the Abood decision should be controlling in this case, saying it should apply only in cases involving full-fledged public employees like teachers or firefighters.

The majority opinion showed uneasiness with decades of laws and judicial rulings that required government workers who choose not to join unions to nonetheless pay fees to the union on the ground that labor unions' efforts on collective bargaining and grievances benefit members and nonmembers alike.

"If we accepted Illinois' argument," Justice Alito wrote, "we would approve an unprecedented violation of the bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsized speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support."

Justice Alito cited precedents saying that union fees that impinged on the First Amendment must serve a compelling state interest that cannot be achieved through less restrictive means. He argued that states might not need to compel nonunion members to pay fees to the unions that represent them if the unions were already doing a fine job representing workers thanks to the employees who opt to join the union and pay dues.

During oral arguments in January, Justice Elena Kagan, said the position taken by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation "would radically restructure the way workplaces across this country are run." But the scope of Monday's ruling is limited because it applies only to "partial public employees" like home care aides and perhaps government-financed child-care workers who provide care at their homes.

Justice Kagan attacked the majority's embrace of the concept of partial public employees, writing that Illinois has sole authority over much of the home-care aides' terms and conditions of employment.

"Today's opinion takes the tack of throwing everything against the wall in the hope that something might stick," she wrote. "A vain hope, as it turns out."

Anticipating a future attack on Abood, Justice Kagan devoted much of her dissent to defending Abood and its decision to uphold government efforts to prevent free-riding. Asserting that the majority underestimated that problem, she wrote "union supporters (no less than union detractors) have an economic incentive to free ride."

Justice Alito noted that the union's lawyers had argued that the home-care aides should be required to pay union fees under a line of precedents in which the Supreme Court ruled that it was not a First Amendment violation to require lawyers to pay fees to their bar associations and public university students to pay mandatory student-activities fees. Justice Alito distinguished the home-care aides' situation and wrote that Monday's decision was "entirely consistent" with those rulings.

Correction: June 30, 2014

An earlier version of this article misstated the middle initial of a Supreme Court justice. He is Samuel A. Alito Jr., not Samuel J.

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