Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-1121c4d6.pdf
Page Number: 17

Cite as:  567 U. S. ____ (2012) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

fault the political agenda of a state-favored union.

In  later  cases  such  as  Abood  and  Hudson,  we  assumed 
without  any  focused  analysis  that  the  dicta  from  Street 
had authorized the opt-out requirement as a constitutional 
matter.  Thus  in  Hudson  we  did  not  take  issue  with  the 
union’s practice of giving employees annual notice and an
opportunity  to  object  to  expected  political  expenditures. 
At  the  same  time,  however,  we  made  it  clear  that  the 
procedures  used  by  a  union  to  collect  money  from  non-
members must satisfy a high standard. 

Contrary  to  the  view  of  the  Ninth  Circuit  panel  major-
ity,  we  did  not  call  for  a  balancing  of  the  “right”  of  the 
union  to  collect  an  agency  fee  against  the  First  Amend-
ment  rights  of  nonmembers.    628  F. 3d,  at  1119–1120. 
As we noted in Davenport, “unions have no constitutional 
entitlement  to  the  fees  of  nonmember-employees.”    551 
U. S.,  at  185.    A  union’s  “collection  of  fees  from  nonmem-
bers is authorized by an act of legislative grace,” 628 F. 3d, 
at  1126  (Wallace,  J.,  dissenting)—one  that  we  have 
termed “unusual” and “extraordinary,”  Davenport, supra, 
at  184,  187.  Far  from  calling  for  a  balancing  of  rights  or 
interests,  Hudson  made  it  clear  that  any  procedure  for 
exacting  fees  from  unwilling  contributors  must  be  “care-
fully tailored to minimize the infringement” of free speech
rights.  475 U. S., at 303.  And to underscore the meaning 
of this careful tailoring, we followed that statement with a 
citation  to  cases  holding  that  measures  burdening  the
freedom of speech or association must serve a “compelling 
interest”  and  must  not  be  significantly  broader  than  nec-
essary to serve that interest.3 

—————— 

3 The specific citation was as follows: 
“See  Roberts  v.  United  States  Jaycees,  [468  U. S.  609,  623  (1984)] 
(Infringements  on  freedom  of  association  ‘may  be  justified  by  regu-
lations  adopted  to  serve  compelling  state  interests,  unrelated  to  the
suppression  of  ideas,  that  cannot  be  achieved  through  means  signifi-
cantly  less  restrictive  of  associational  freedoms’);  Elrod  v.  Burns,  427