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24  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

Opinion of the Court 

the  standard  Pickering  analysis  requires  modification  in
that  situation.    See  513  U. S.,  at  466–468,  and  n. 11.    A 
speech-restrictive  law  with  “widespread  impact,”  we  have 
said,  “gives  rise  to  far  more  serious  concerns  than  could
any  single  supervisory  decision.”  Id.,  at  468.    Therefore, 
when  such  a  law  is  at  issue,  the  government  must  shoul­
der  a  correspondingly  “heav[ier]”  burden,  id.,  at  466,  and 
is entitled to considerably less deference in its assessment 
that  a  predicted  harm  justifies  a  particular  impingement 
on  First  Amendment  rights,  see  id.,  at  475–476,  n. 21; 
accord,  id.,  at  482–483  (O’Connor,  J.,  concurring  in  judg­
ment in part and dissenting in part).  The end product of 
those  adjustments  is  a  test  that  more  closely  resembles
exacting scrutiny than the traditional Pickering analysis.
The  core  collective-bargaining  issue  of  wages  and  bene­
fits illustrates this point.  Suppose that a single employee 
complains that he or she should have received a 5% raise.
This individual complaint would likely constitute a matter 
of only private concern and would therefore be unprotected 
under Pickering.  But a public-sector union’s demand for a 
5%  raise  for  the  many  thousands  of  employees  it  repre­
sents would be another matter entirely.  Granting such a
raise  could  have  a  serious  impact  on  the  budget  of  the
government  unit  in  question,  and  by  the  same  token, 
denying  a  raise  might  have  a  significant  effect  on  the 
performance  of  government  services.    When  a  large  num­
ber  of  employees  speak  through  their  union,  the  category 
of speech that is of public concern is greatly enlarged, and 
the  category  of  speech  that  is  of  only  private  concern  is
substantially  shrunk.    By  disputing  this,  post,  at  13–14, 
the dissent denies the obvious. 
  Second,  the  Pickering  framework  fits  much  less  well 
where the government compels speech or speech subsidies 
in  support  of  third  parties.  Pickering  is  based  on  the 
insight  that  the  speech  of  a  public-sector  employee  may 
interfere  with  the  effective  operation  of  a  government