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Weekly litigation report — January 19, 2019

January 19, 2019 | By JAMES BURLING

Oral argument held again in Knick at the Supreme Court On January 16, the Supreme Court heard reargument in Knick v. Scott Township, the case where Rose Knick sued her town after it declared the public could trespass on her property in order to search for some old stones, claimed to be colonial-era graves. Knick … ...

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First Amendment wins! Unions cannot steal non-members’ wages

June 27, 2018 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

After 40 years of garnishing worker paychecks under the authority of Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, today the Supreme Court held in Janus v. AFSCME that the coercion must end. In a 5-4 split, the Court today holds that the First Amendment prohibits states from giving public employee unions the special privilege of docking … ...

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SCOTUSblog symposium on Janus v. AFSCME

December 19, 2017 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

Today begins SCOTUSblog’s online symposium discussing the case that could free government workers nationwide from being coerced to support public employee unions. … ...

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One step closer to protecting workers’ rights

December 01, 2017 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

After 40 years of garnishing worker paychecks under the authority of Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the coercion must end. It’s about time the unions started thinking about how to offer value to workers. … ...

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Janus op-ed in the Daily Journal

October 02, 2017 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

Today’s Daily Journal celebrates the first day of the new Supreme Court Term by publishing an array of op-eds on pending cases, including my own take on Janus v. AFCSME. That case will decide whether to overrule Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, a 40-year old decision that grants to public employee unions an extraordinary benefit … ...

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Liberating workers from compulsory unionism

July 13, 2017 | By DEBORAH LA FETRA

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 wo ...

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President's weekly report — April 1, 2016

April 01, 2016 | By ROB RIVETT

Supreme Court member apologizes  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg today issued an apology today on behalf of all Justices, living and dead, who ever espoused the notion of a “living constitution.” Saying that she was visited by the ghost of her late friend, Nino Scalia, she exclaimed, “it’s a stable constitution that we need, no ...

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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 ...

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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 ...