Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-1466_2b3j.pdf
Page Number: 12

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

7 

Opinion of the Court 

concerned  a  statute  permitting  creditors  of  a  government 
contractor  to  bring  suit  on  a  bond  between  6  and  12 
months after the completion of the work.  Id., at 162.  One 
creditor  filed  suit  before  the  6-month  starting  date,  but
another intervened within the 6-to-12-month window.  The 
Court held that the “[t]he intervention [did] not cure th[e]
vice in the original [prematurely filed] suit,” but the Court 
also contemplated treating “intervention . . . as an original 
suit”  in  a  case  in  which  the  intervenor  met  the  require­
ments that a plaintiff must satisfy—e.g., filing a separate
complaint  and  properly  serving  the  defendants.    Id.,  at 
163–164.  Because  that  is  what  petitioner  did  here,  we 
may reach the merits of the question presented. 

III
  In  Abood,  the  Court  upheld  the  constitutionality  of  an 
agency-shop arrangement like the one now before us, 431
U. S., at 232, but in more recent cases we have recognized
that  this  holding  is  “something  of  an  anomaly,”  Knox  v. 
Service  Employees,  567  U. S.  298,  311  (2012),  and  that 
Abood’s  “analysis  is  questionable  on  several  grounds,” 
Harris, 573 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17); see id., at ___–___ 
(slip op., at 17–20) (discussing flaws in Abood’s reasoning).
We  have  therefore  refused  to  extend  Abood  to  situations 
where  it  does  not  squarely  control,  see  Harris,  supra,  at 
___–___ (slip op., at 27–29), while leaving for another day 
the  question  whether  Abood  should  be  overruled,  Harris, 
supra, at ___, n. 19 (slip op., at 27, n. 19); see Knox, supra, 
at 310–311. 

We  now  address  that  question.    We  first  consider 
whether Abood’s holding is consistent with standard First 
Amendment principles. 

A 
The First Amendment, made applicable to the States by
the  Fourteenth  Amendment,  forbids  abridgment  of  the