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38  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

Opinion of the Court 

and  benefits  are  important  political  issues,  but  that  is
generally not so in the private sector.”  Harris, 573 U. S., 
at ___ (slip op., at 17). 

Overlooking  the  importance  of  this  distinction,  “Abood 

failed  to  appreciate  the  conceptual  difficulty  of  distin­
guishing  in  public-sector  cases  between  union  expendi­
tures that are made for collective-bargaining purposes and
those that are made to achieve political ends.”  Id., at ___ 
(slip  op.,  at  18).  Likewise,  “Abood  does  not  seem  to  have 
anticipated  the  magnitude  of  the  practical  administrative
problems  that  would  result  in  attempting  to  classify
public-sector  union  expenditures  as  either  ‘chargeable’ . . . or 
nonchargeable.”  Ibid.  Nor did Abood “foresee the practi­
cal problems that would face objecting nonmembers.”  Id., 
at ___ (slip op., at 19). 

In  sum,  as  detailed  in  Harris,  Abood  was  not  well 

reasoned.25 

B 
Another  relevant  consideration  in  the  stare  decisis 
calculus  is  the  workability  of  the  precedent  in  question, 
Montejo v.  Louisiana,  556 U. S. 778, 792 (2009), and that
factor also weighs against Abood. 

1 
Abood’s  line  between  chargeable  and  nonchargeable
union  expenditures  has  proved  to  be  impossible  to  draw 
with precision.  We tried to give the line some definition in 
Lehnert.    There,  a  majority  of  the  Court  adopted  a  three-
part  test  requiring  that  chargeable  expenses  (1)  be  “ ‘ger­
—————— 

25 Contrary  to  the  dissent’s  claim,  see  post,  at  19,  and  n. 4,  the  fact 
that “[t]he rationale of [Abood] does not withstand careful analysis” is a 
reason to overrule it, e.g., Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558, 577 (2003).
And that is even truer when, as here, the defenders of the precedent do 
not  attempt  to  “defend  [its  actual]  reasoning.”    Citizens  United  v. 
Federal  Election  Comm’n,  558  U. S.  310,  363  (2010);  id.,  at  382–385 
(ROBERTS, C. J., concurring).