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Page Number: 16.0

12 

KNOX v. SERVICE EMPLOYEES 

Opinion of the Court 

Shouldn’t  the  default  rule  comport  with  the  probable 
preferences of most nonmembers?  And isn’t it likely that 
most  employees  who  choose  not  to  join  the  union  that 
represents their bargaining unit prefer not to pay the full 
amount  of  union  dues?    An  opt-out  system  creates  a  risk
that the fees paid by nonmembers will be used to further
political  and  ideological  ends  with  which  they  do  not 
agree.  But  a  “[u]nion  should  not  be  permitted  to  exact  a 
service  fee  from  nonmembers  without  first  establishing  a 
procedure  which  will  avoid  the  risk  that  their  funds  will
be used, even temporarily, to finance ideological activities 
unrelated to collective bargaining.”  Hudson, supra, at 305 
(internal quotation marks omitted).

Although  the  difference  between  opt-out  and  opt-in 
schemes  is  important,  our  prior  cases  have  given  sur-
prisingly  little  attention  to  this  distinction.    Indeed,  ac-
ceptance  of  the  opt-out  approach  appears  to  have  come
about  more  as  a  historical  accident  than  through  the 
careful application of First Amendment principles. 

The  trail  begins  with  dicta  in  Street,  where  we  consid-
ered  whether  a  federal  collective-bargaining  statute  au-
thorized  a  union  to  impose  compulsory  fees  for  political 
activities.  367 U. S., at 774.  The plaintiffs were employ-
ees  who  had  affirmatively  objected  to  the  way  their  fees
were  being  used,  and  so  we  took  that  feature  of  the  case 
for  granted.  We  held  that  the  statute  did  not  authorize 
the  use  of  the  objecting  employees’  fees  for  ideological 
purposes,  and  we  stated  in  passing  that  “dissent  is  not 
to  be  presumed—it  must  affirmatively  be  made  known  to
the  union  by  the  dissenting  employee.”    Ibid.  In  making
that  offhand  remark,  we  did  not  pause  to  consider  the 
broader constitutional implications of an affirmative opt-out 
requirement.    Nor  did  we  explore  the  extent  of  First
Amendment protection for employees who might not qual-
ify as active “dissenters” but who would nonetheless prefer
to  keep  their  own  money  rather  than  subsidizing  by  de-