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Page Number: 77.0

22  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

cises  of  constitutional  linedrawing  go,  Abood  stands  well 
above  average.  In  the  40  years  since  Abood,  this  Court 
has  had  to  resolve  only  a  handful  of  cases  raising  ques-
tions about the distinction.  To my knowledge, the circuit
courts  are  not  divided  on  any  classification  issue;  neither
are  they  issuing  distress  signals  of  the  kind  that  some-
times  prompt  the  Court  to  reverse  a  decision.    See,  e.g., 
Johnson v. United States, 576 U. S. ___ (2015) (overruling 
precedent  because  of  frequent  splits  and  mass  confusion). 
And  that  tranquility  is  unsurprising:  There  may  be  some 
gray  areas  (there  always  are),  but  in  the  mine  run  of 
cases,  everyone  knows  the  difference  between  politicking 
and  collective  bargaining.    The  majority  cites  some  disa-
greement  in  two  of  the  classification  cases  this  Court 
decided—as  if  non-unanimity  among  Justices  were  some-
thing  startling.    And  it  notes  that  a  dissenter  in  one  of 
those  cases  called  the  Court’s  approach  “malleable”  and
“not  principled,”  ante,  at  39—as  though  those  weren’t 
stock  terms  in  dissenting  vocabulary.    See,  e.g.,  Murr  v. 
Wisconsin,  582  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2017)  (ROBERTS, C. J.,  dis-
senting) (slip op., at 2); Dietz v. Bouldin, 579 U. S. ___, ___ 
(2016)  (THOMAS,  J.,  dissenting)  (slip  op.,  at  1);  Alabama 
Legislative  Black  Caucus  v.  Alabama,  575  U. S.  ___,  ___ 
(2015) (slip op., at 13) (SCALIA, J., dissenting).  As I wrote 
in  Harris  a  few  Terms  ago:  “If  the  kind  of  hand-wringing 
about blurry lines that the majority offers were enough to
justify breaking with precedent, we might have to discard 
whole volumes of the U. S. Reports.”  573 U. S., at ___ (slip 
op., at 15).

And  in  any  event,  one  stare  decisis  factor—reliance— 
dominates  all  others  here  and  demands  keeping  Abood. 
Stare  decisis,  this  Court  has  held,  “has  added  force  when 
the  legislature,  in  the  public  sphere,  and  citizens,  in  the 
private  realm,  have  acted  in  reliance  on  a  previous  deci-
sion.”  Hilton v. South Carolina Public Railways Comm’n, 
502  U. S.  197,  202  (1991).    That  is  because  overruling  a