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The Supreme Court briefing in Janus v. AFSCME is underway. You'll recall that this Supreme Court case presents the First Amendment issue of whether public employee unions can garnish the wages of non-union members to support the unions' collective bargaining and other political activities, without those workers' consent. Mark Janus, a non-union pub ...

The First Amendment protects the right to speak and associate as well as the right to refrain from speaking and associating. Today the Supreme Court decided to hear the First Amendment case – Janus v. AFSCME – that will determine whether non-union public employees must continue to subsidize the very unions they do not want to join or support. The o ...

The very powerful public employee unions in Illinois have long relied on their favored status to garnish wages of workers and "represent" them in politically-fraught negotiations over collective bargaining agreements with the state. The unions' power is so great that state laws allow them to steal wages and purport to speak for workers who are not ...

I wrote about today's Supreme Court affirmance-by-tie-vote in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association for Forbes.com.  The bottom line is that today's decision is a profound disappointment to non-union public employees who were this close to prevailing over the unions' ability to garnish their wages for politicking in the guise of collective ...

Alexis De Tocqueville was deeply impressed by America's use of voluntary associations to pursue undertakings both large and small, in every aspect of life.  Public employee unions may soon be included in that category of voluntary associations, as several justices in today's oral argument in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association seem poised ...

America's founding fathers knew their ancient history well. The experiences of Greece and Rome were almost the only guides they had when fashioning a government that wasn't a monarchy. And one thing they feared was what they called "Caesarism": the tendency of a popular government to devolve into competing teams, each grasping for power and wealth ...

The briefing in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association is underway. You'll recall that this Supreme Court case presents the issue of whether public employee unions can garnish the wages of non-union members to support the unions' collective bargaining and other political activities, without those workers' consent. Rebecca Friedrichs and her ...

One of the big cases of this Supreme Court term is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which will decide if public employee unions can garnish non-union workers' wages to pay for activities ostensibly related to collective bargaining without the workers' affirmative consent.  As we've noted in previous blog posts, everything a public emp ...

The California Teachers Association—one of the most politically powerful groups in the state—may have to start funding its political campaigns with the money of only those teachers who actually support its goals.  Unlike other groups that seek donations from like-minded people who support the organizations' goals, the CTA has long benefited from a ...