Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-1466_2b3j.pdf
Page Number: 50

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

45 

Opinion of the Court 

sions granting them such fees.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 67–68; see 
Brief  for  State  Respondents  54;  Brief  for  Union  Respond­
ent 50; post, at 22–26 (KAGAN, J., dissenting).  In this case, 
however, reliance does not carry decisive weight. 

For one thing, it would be unconscionable to permit free
speech  rights  to  be  abridged  in  perpetuity  in  order  to 
preserve contract provisions that will expire on their own 
in a few years’ time.  “The fact that [public-sector unions] 
may  view  [agency  fees]  as  an  entitlement  does  not  estab­
lish  the  sort  of  reliance  interest  that  could  outweigh  the 
countervailing interest that [nonmembers] share in having 
their  constitutional  rights  fully  protected.”  Arizona  v. 
Gant, 556 U. S. 332, 349 (2009). 
  For  another,  Abood  does  not  provide  “a  clear  or  easily
applicable standard, so arguments for reliance based on its
clarity  are  misplaced.”  South  Dakota  v.  Wayfair,  Inc., 
ante, at 20; see supra, at 38–41. 

This  is  especially  so  because  public-sector  unions  have 
been on notice for years regarding this Court’s misgivings 
about  Abood. 
In  Knox,  decided  in  2012,  we  described 
Abood  as  a  First  Amendment  “anomaly.”    567  U. S.,  at 
311.  Two years later in Harris, we were asked to overrule 
Abood,  and  while  we  found  it  unnecessary  to  take  that 
step, we cataloged Abood’s many weaknesses.  In 2015, we 
granted  a  petition  for  certiorari  asking  us  to  review  a
decision  that  sustained  an  agency-fee  arrangement  under 
Abood.  Friedrichs v.  California Teachers Assn., 576 U. S. 
___.  After exhaustive briefing and argument on the ques­
tion  whether  Abood  should  be  overruled,  we  affirmed  the 
decision  below  by  an  equally  divided  vote.    578  U. S.  ___ 
(2016) (per curiam).  During this period of time, any public-
sector union seeking an agency-fee provision in a collective-
bargaining  agreement  must  have  understood  that  the 
constitutionality of such a provision was uncertain. 

That  is  certainly  true  with  respect  to  the  collective-
bargaining  agreement  in  the  present  case.    That  agree­