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26  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

Opinion of the Court 

hibited  from  permitting  nonmembers  to  be  charged  for 
this  speech,  but  under  Pickering,  the  employees’  free 
speech  interests  could  be  overcome  if  a  court  found  that
the employer’s interests outweighed the employees’. 

A  similar  problem  arises  with  respect  to  speech  that  is 
germane to collective bargaining.  The parties dispute how
much  of  this  speech  is  of  public  concern,  but  respondents 
concede  that  much  of  it  falls  squarely  into  that  category.
See  Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  47,  65.  Under  Abood,  nonmembers 
may  be  required  to  pay  for  all  this  speech,  but  Pickering
would permit that practice only if the employer’s interests 
outweighed those of the employees.  Thus, recasting Abood 
as  an  application  of  Pickering  would  substantially  alter 
the Abood scheme. 

For all these reasons, Pickering is a poor fit indeed. 

V 

Even if we were to apply some form of Pickering, Illinois’ 

agency-fee arrangement would not survive. 

A 
Respondents  begin  by  suggesting  that  union  speech  in
collective-bargaining and grievance proceedings should be
treated like the employee speech in Garcetti, i.e., as speech
“pursuant  to  [an  employee’s]  official  duties,”  547  U. S.,  at
421.  Many  employees,  in  both  the  public  and  private 
sectors,  are  paid  to  write  or  speak  for  the  purpose  of  fur­
thering  the  interests  of  their  employers.    There  are  laws 
that protect public employees from being compelled to say 
things  that  they  reasonably  believe  to  be  untrue  or  im­
proper,  see  id.,  at  425–426,  but  in  general  when  public 
employees  are  performing  their  job  duties,  their  speech 
may  be  controlled  by  their  employer.    Trying  to  fit  union 
speech into this framework, respondents now suggest that 
the union speech funded by agency fees forms part of the 
official  duties  of  the  union  officers  who  engage  in  the