Justices to Consider Union Fees

Fox News reported recently that the U.S. Supreme Court will consider limiting the power of unions who represent government employees to collect fees from employees who are not union members.

The justices will hear arguments from a group of California teachers who argue that their First Amendment rights are violated when they must pay dues to unions whose views do not reflect their own.

The teachers want the court to overturn a legal precedent that said unions can require non-members to pay for bargaining costs as long as the fees don’t go toward political purposes.

The court has stopped short of overturning the 1977 case, but in a 5-4 opinion last year, Justice Samuel Alito called the case “questionable on several grounds.” He said a “bedrock principle” of the First Amendment is that “no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”

The teachers’ union says the fees are necessary because it has a legal duty to represent all teachers, even those who are not part of the union.

Public workers in 25 states are required to pay fair-share fees if they are represented by a union, regardless of membership. Public-sector workers have a union membership rate of 35.7%, more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers at 6.6%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. S