In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 16-3638

MARK JANUS and BRIAN TRYGG,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE, COUNTY AND MUNICIPAL

EMPLOYEES, COUNCIL 31, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees,

and

LISA MADIGAN, Attorney General of the State of Illinois,

Intervening Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 15 C 1235 — Robert W. Gettleman, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED MARCH 1, 2017 — DECIDED MARCH 21, 2017

____________________

Before POSNER, SYKES, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. In Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), the Supreme Court upheld, against 

a challenge based on the First Amendment, a Michigan law 
2 No. 16-3638

that allowed a public employer (in that case a municipal 

board of education), whose employees (public-school teachers) were represented by a union, to require those of its employees who did not join the union nevertheless to pay fees 

to it because they benefited from the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the employer. The fees could only 

be great enough to cover the cost of the union’s activities 

that benefited them; they could not be expanded to enable 

the union to use a portion of them “for the expression of political views, on behalf of political candidates, or toward the 

advancement of other ideological causes not germane to [the 

union’s] duties as collective-bargaining representative.” 431 

U.S. at 235–36. For were that permitted, the workers who 

disagreed with the political views embraced by the union 

would be unwilling contributors to expenditures for promoting political views anathema to them, and the law requiring 

those contributions would thereby have infringed their constitutional right of free speech.

Illinois has a law, similar to the Michigan law, called the 

Illinois Public Relations Act, 5 ILCS 315 et seq., under which

a union representing public employees collects dues from its

members, but only “fair share” fees (a proportionate share of 

the costs of collective bargaining and contract administration) from non-member employees on whose behalf the union also negotiates. See 5 ILCS 315/6. But in 2015 the governor of Illinois filed suit in federal district court to halt the unions’ collecting these fees, his ground being that the statute 

violates the First Amendment by compelling employees who 

disapprove of the union to contribute money to it.

The district court dismissed the governor’s complaint, 

however, on the ground that he had no standing to sue be-
No. 16-3638 3

cause he had nothing to gain from eliminating the compulsory fees, as he is not subject to them. But two public employees—Mark Janus and Brian Trygg—had already moved 

to intervene in the suit as plaintiffs seeking the overruling of

Abood. Of course, only the Supreme Court has the power, if it 

so chooses, to overrule Abood. Janus and Trygg acknowledge 

that they therefore cannot prevail either in the district court 

or in our court—that their case must travel through both 

lower courts—district court and court of appeals—before 

they can seek review by the Supreme Court.

While dismissing the governor’s complaint for lack of 

standing, the district court granted the employees’ motion to 

intervene and declared that the complaint appended to their 

motion would be a valid substitute for Governor Rauner’s 

dismissed complaint. Technically, of course, there was nothing for Janus and Trygg to intervene in, given the dismissal 

of the governor’s complaint. But to reject intervention by Janus and Trygg on that ground would be a waste of time, for 

if forbidden to intervene the two of them would simply file

their own complaint when Rauner’s was dismissed. As there 

would be no material difference between intervening in 

Rauner’s suit and bringing their own suit in the same court, 

the efficient approach was, as the district court ruled, to 

deem Rauner’s suit superseded by a motion to intervene that 

was the equivalent of the filing of a new suit. See Village of 

Oakwood v. State Bank & Trust Co., 481 F.3d 364, 367 (6th Cir. 

2007).

But we need to distinguish between the two plaintiffs,

Janus and Trygg, because while Janus has never before challenged the requirement that he pay the union “fair share” 

fees, Trygg has. First before the Illinois Labor Relations 
4 No. 16-3638

Board and then before the Illinois Appellate Court, Trygg 

complained that the union bargaining on his behalf (the 

Teamsters Local No. 916, one of the defendants in this case) 

was ignoring a provision of the Illinois law that allows a 

person who has religious objections to paying a fee to a union to instead pay the fee to a charity. 5 ILCS 315-6(g). The 

Illinois court agreed, and on remand to the Board Trygg obtained the relief he sought: instead of paying the fair-share 

fee to the union, he could pay the same amount to a charity 

of his choice. The defendants (the unions that bargain on behalf of Janus and Trygg, respectively—AFSCME for Janus,

the Teamsters for Trygg—the Director of the Illinois Department of Central Management Services, which is the state 

agency that has collective bargaining agreements with both 

unions; and the Attorney General of Illinois intervening on 

the side of the defendants) argue that Trygg’s claim in the 

present suit is precluded by his earlier litigation.

Claim preclusion is designed to prevent multiple lawsuits between the same parties where the facts and issues are 

the same in all of the suits, and 28 U.S.C. § 1738 requires federal courts to give the same preclusive effect to a state court 

judgment that it would be given by the courts of the state in 

question. Kremer v. Chemical Construction Corp., 456 U.S. 461, 

466 (1982). Trygg’s First Amendment claim and his earlier 

Illinois statutory claim arise from the same fact: the existence 

of an Illinois law requiring that he pay fees to the Teamsters, 

the union required to bargain on his behalf. But the parties 

disagree as to whether Trygg could have raised his First 

Amendment claim in the earlier litigation. It’s true that the 

Illinois Labor Relations Board could not have entertained a 

constitutional challenge to the statute, but Trygg could have 

included the claim in his appeal from the Board’s decision to 
No. 16-3638 5

the court, because it presented an issue relevant to the legality of the Board’s action. See Reich v. City of Freeport, 527 F.2d

666, 671–72 (7th Cir. 1975). He did not do so; and because he

had a “full and fair opportunity” to do so, he is precluded by

Illinois law from litigating the claim in the present suit. See 

Abner v. Illinois Department of Transportation, 674 F.3d 716, 719 

(7th Cir. 2012). He missed his chance.

Janus’s claim was also properly dismissed, though on a 

different ground: that he failed to state a valid claim because,

as we said earlier, neither the district court nor this court can 

overrule Abood, and it is Abood that stands in the way of his 

claim.

The judgment of the district court dismissing the complaint is therefore

AFFIRMED.