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18  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

Opinion of the Court 

tion of their interests is placed in the hands of the union, 
and  if  the  union  were  free  to  disregard  or  even  work
against  those  interests,  these  employees  would  be  wholly 
unprotected.  That  is  why  we  said  many  years  ago  that 
serious  “constitutional  questions  [would]  arise”  if  the 
union were not subject to the duty to represent all employ­
ees fairly.  Steele, supra, at 198. 

In sum, we do not see any reason to treat the free-rider
interest  any  differently  in  the  agency-fee  context  than  in
any other First Amendment context.  See Knox, 567 U. S., 
at 311, 321.  We therefore hold that agency fees cannot be
upheld on free-rider grounds. 

IV 
Implicitly  acknowledging  the  weakness  of  Abood’s  own 
reasoning,  proponents  of  agency  fees  have  come  forward 
with alternative justifications for the decision, and we now 
address these arguments. 

A 
The  most  surprising  of  these  new  arguments  is  the
Union  respondent’s  originalist  defense  of  Abood.  Accord­
ing to this argument, Abood was correctly decided because 
the  First  Amendment  was  not  originally  understood  to
provide any protection for the free speech rights of public 
employees.  Brief for Union Respondent 2–3, 17–20.

As  an  initial  matter,  we  doubt  that  the  Union—or  its 
members—actually want us to hold that public employees 
have “no [free speech] rights.”  Id., at 1.  Cf., e.g., Brief for 
National Treasury Employees Union as Amicus Curiae in 
Garcetti v. Ceballos, O. T. 2005, No. 04–473, p. 7 (arguing 
for  “broa[d]”  public-employee  First  Amendment  rights); 
Brief  for  AFL–CIO  as  Amicus  Curiae  in  No.  04–473 
(similar).

It  is  particularly  discordant  to  find  this  argument  in  a
brief  that  trumpets  the  importance  of  stare  decisis.  See