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Page Number: 57

2  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

an exclusive employee representative to bargain with.  Far 
from  an  “anomaly,”  ante,  at  7,  the  Abood  regime  was  a 
paradigmatic example of how the government can regulate
speech in its capacity as an employer. 

Not any longer.  Today, the Court succeeds in its 6-year
campaign  to  reverse  Abood.  See  Friedrichs  v.  California 
Teachers  Assn.,  578  U. S.  ___  (2016)  (per  curiam);  Harris 
v. Quinn, 573 U. S. ___ (2014); Knox v. Service Employees, 
567  U. S.  298  (2012).    Its  decision  will  have  large-scale 
consequences.    Public  employee  unions  will  lose  a  secure
source  of  financial  support.  State  and  local  governments 
that  thought  fair-share  provisions  furthered  their  inter-
ests  will  need  to  find  new  ways  of  managing  their  work-
forces.  Across  the  country,  the  relationships  of  public 
employees  and  employers  will  alter  in  both  predictable 
and wholly unexpected ways.

Rarely  if  ever  has  the  Court  overruled  a  decision—let
alone  one  of  this  import—with  so  little  regard  for  the
usual  principles  of  stare  decisis.  There  are  no  special
justifications for reversing Abood.  It has proved workable.
No  recent  developments  have  eroded  its  underpinnings.
And  it  is  deeply  entrenched,  in  both  the  law  and  the  real
world.  More than 20 States have statutory schemes built 
on  the  decision.  Those  laws  underpin  thousands  of  ongo-
ing  contracts  involving  millions  of  employees.    Reliance 
interests do not come any stronger than those surrounding 
Abood.  And likewise, judicial disruption does not get any 
greater  than  what  the  Court  does  today.  I  respectfully
dissent. 

I 
I begin with Abood, the 41-year-old precedent the major-
ity  overrules.    That  case  involved  a  union  that  had  been 
certified as the exclusive representative of Detroit’s public
school  teachers.  The  union’s  collective-bargaining  agree-
ment  with  the  city  included  an  “agency  shop”  clause,