Articles

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 battle ...

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 consent. Agency shop fees ar ...

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 ...

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 fr ...

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 em ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 poise ...

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 ...