Freedom of work and speech

FireDogLake is unhappy about a new federal-rights lawsuit that could accomplish what Proposition 32 did not in California, which is the elimination of a union's right to extract fees from unwilling workers and use them to promote political causes inimical to the worker:

Over the years the U.S. Supreme Court has generally upheld union practices that require public-sector employees to first pay dues and then opt out if they don’t support a union’s political activities.  The practice was upheld in a two-decade old case known as Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.  But in an unrelated 2012 case, the Supreme Court suggested that the high court’s earlier Abood decision may have been a mistake. 

“Justice [Samuel Alito], writing for five justices, went out of his way to raise doubts about the Abood decision and, in effect, to invite a test case to overturn it,” wrote Peter Scheer in the Huffington Post.  “The Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association lawsuit is an RSVP to that invitation.”

Miss Manners assures us that RSVPs are always correct.  The lawsuit's polite sponsor, the Center for Individual Rights, is a suitable invitee.   It was behind the 1996 Hopwood v. Texas case, which succerssfully challenged affirmative action in the University of Texas's selection process, and LaRoque v. Holder, which challenged the same pre-clearance requirements under the Voting Rights Act that were overturned last month in Shelby County v. Holder.   It was also behind California's Proposition 209, a successful 1996 anti-affirmative-action ballot initiative.  CIR has defended James O’Keefe in disputes over California’s anti-tape recording statute, as well as Anita MonCrief, an ex-ACORN executive who was sued by her old group.

Supporters of California's mandatory union dues are worried that a Supreme Court precedent in this case could spell doom for mandatory union dues nationwide.  The CIR link above takes you straight to a donation page.