Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-1466_2b3j.pdf
Page Number: 42.0

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

37 

Opinion of the Court 

tions established by Congress.”  431 U. S., at 222 (empha­
sis  added).  But  Hanson  deferred  to  that  judgment  in
deciding  the  Commerce  Clause  and  substantive  due  pro­
cess questions that were the focus of the case.  Such defer­
ence  to  legislative  judgments  is  inappropriate  in  deciding 
free speech issues.

If  Abood  had  considered  whether  agency  fees  were
actually  needed  to  serve  the  asserted  state  interests,  it
might not have made the serious mistake of assuming that 
one of those interests—“labor peace”—demanded, not only 
that  a  single  union  be  designated  as  the  exclusive  repre­
sentative of all the employees in the relevant unit, but also
that  nonmembers  be  required  to  pay  agency  fees.    Defer­
ring  to  a  perceived  legislative  judgment,  Abood  failed  to 
see  that  the  designation  of  a  union  as  exclusive  repre­
sentative  and  the  imposition  of  agency  fees  are  not  inex­
tricably linked.  See supra, at 11–12; Harris, supra, at ___ 
(slip op., at 31). 

Abood  also  did  not  sufficiently  take  into  account  the
difference between the effects of agency fees in public- and 
private-sector  collective  bargaining.  The  challengers  in 
Abood  argued  that  collective  bargaining  with  a  govern­
ment employer, unlike collective bargaining in the private
sector,  involves  “inherently  ‘political’ ”  speech.    431  U. S., 
at  226.  The  Court  did  not  dispute  that  characterization,
and  in  fact  conceded  that  “decisionmaking  by  a  public 
employer  is  above  all  a  political  process”  driven  more  by 
policy concerns than economic ones.  Id., at 228; see id., at 
228–231.  But  (again  invoking  Hanson),  the  Abood  Court 
asserted  that  public  employees  do  not  have  “weightier
First  Amendment  interest[s]”  against  compelled  speech
than  do  private  employees.  Id.,  at  229.  That  missed  the 
point.  Assuming  for  the  sake  of  argument  that  the  First 
Amendment  applies  at  all  to  private-sector  agency-shop 
arrangements, the individual interests at stake still differ. 
“In the public sector, core issues such as wages, pensions,