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Page Number: 22

18 

KNOX v. SERVICE EMPLOYEES 

Opinion of the Court 

when the initial Hudson notice was sent also ran afoul of 
the  First  Amendment.  The  SEIU  required  these  employ-
ees  to  pay  56.35%  of  the  special  assessment,  just  as  they 
had  been  required  to  pay  56.35%  of  the  regular  annual
dues.  But  the  union  proclaimed  that  the  special  assess-
ment would be used to support an electoral campaign and 
would  not  be  used  for  ordinary  union  expenses.  Accord-
ingly, there is no reason to suppose that 56.35% of the new 
assessment  was  used  for  properly  chargeable  expenses. 
On  the  contrary,  if  the  union  is  to  be  taken  at  its  word, 
virtually  all  of  the  money  was  slated  for  nonchargeable 
uses. 

The  procedure  accepted  in  Hudson  is  designed  for  use
when  a  union  sends  out  its  regular  annual  dues  notices. 
The  procedure  is  predicated  on  the  assumption  that  a 
union’s  allocation  of  funds  for  chargeable  and  noncharge-
able purposes is not likely to vary greatly from one year to
the  next.7  No  such  assumption  is  reasonable,  however, 
when a union levies a special assessment or raises dues as 
a result of events that were not anticipated or disclosed at
the  time  when  a  yearly  Hudson  notice  was  sent.  Accord-
ingly, use of figures based on an audit of the union’s oper-
ations during an entire previous year makes no sense.

Nor  would  it  be  feasible  to  devise  a  new  breakdown  of 
chargeable  and  nonchargeable  expenses  for  the  special 
assessment.    Determining  that  breakdown  is  problematic 
enough when it is done on a regular annual basis because
auditors typically do not make a legal determination as to
whether  particular  expenditures  are  chargeable.  Instead, 

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7 The SEIU contends that “[s]ignificant fluctuations in the chargeable 
and  nonchargeable  proportions  of  a  union’s  spending  are  inevitable,” 
Brief for Respondent 13, and the dissent appears to agree, post, at 10. 
But if the Hudson Court had proceeded on this assumption it is doubt-
ful  that  it  would  have  found  it  acceptable  for  a  union to  rely  solely  on 
the  breakdown  in  the  most  recent  year  rather  than  computing  the
average breakdown over a longer period.