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The Supreme Court today issued its decision in Knox v. SEIU, the union fees case in which PLF (joined by Cato, MSLF, and CCJ), filed this amicus brief. The case was about whether the union violated the law by requiring non-members to pay a special assessment to support a political campaign without first issuing the … ...

Tune in to Air Talk with Larry Mantle (89.3 KPCC) in Southern California at 11:27 this morning, when I’ll be discussing the United States Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Harris v. Quinn.  The Court will decide if non-union personal care assistants who were deemed to be public employees by the State of Illinois, can be … ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...