Articles

Forced union fees should end

April 25, 2014 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

The government’s days of forcing non-union members to pay union fees are likely numbered.  A few weeks ago, I discussed two pending cases challenging such fees and I explained that such fees amount to compelled speech.  This post explains why those fees are unconstitutional.  When defending compelled speech, the government faces an uphill ...

Articles

CTA v. teachers’ First Amendment rights

August 12, 2014 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

Mike Antonucci has a goldmine of inside information about teacher unions at the Education Intelligence Report. Among the gems is the California Teacher Association’s plans for responding to the Supreme Court’s eventual invalidation of “agency shop fee” laws that allow the union to garnish teacher paychecks without their cons ...

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Rescuing teachers from the grasp of forced unionism

February 26, 2015 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

California law forces all public school teachers to pay chargeable dues to the labor union that represents them, regardless of whether they are union members.  California law also forces all public school teachers to pay nonchargeable union dues unless they expressly opt-out of those payments.  A nonunion public school teacher has only six weeks ...

Articles

Supreme Court to review public employee unions’ ability to garnish wages

June 30, 2015 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

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 benefi ...

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Will the Supreme Court value individual rights over public employee unions?

August 24, 2015 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

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, ever ...

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Opening salvos in the teacher union dues case

September 11, 2015 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

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 F ...

Articles

Government unions : the Praetorian Band of the government

September 11, 2015 | By TIMOTHY SANDEFUR

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 graspi ...

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Agency shop fees on the brink

January 11, 2016 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

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 Associatio ...

Articles

Teachers’ constitutional rights : out with a whimper

March 29, 2016 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

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 g ...