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24  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

parties—immediately—to  renegotiate  once-settled  terms
and create new tradeoffs.  It does so knowing that many of 
the parties will have to revise (or redo) multiple contracts 
simultaneously.  (New York City, for example, has agreed 
to  agency  fees  in  144  contracts  with  97  public-sector  un-
ions.  See Brief for New York City Municipal Labor Com-
mittee as Amicus Curiae 4.)  It does so knowing that those
renegotiations will occur in an environment of legal uncer-
tainty,  as  state  governments  scramble  to enact  new  labor 
legislation.  See supra, at 23.  It does so with no real clue 
of  what  will  happen  next—of  how  its  action  will  alter 
public-sector  labor  relations.  It  does  so  even  though  the
government services affected—policing, firefighting, teach-
ing,  transportation,  sanitation  (and  more)—affect  the 
quality of life of tens of millions of Americans. 

The  majority  asserts  that  no  one  should  care  much
because  the  canceled  agreements  are  “of  rather  short
duration”  and  would  “expire  on  their  own  in  a  few  years’ 
time.”  Ante,  at  45,  46.    But  to  begin  with,  that  response 
ignores  the  substantial  time  and  effort  that  state  legisla-
tures  will  have  to  devote  to  revamping  their  statutory
schemes.  See  supra,  at  23.  And  anyway,  it  misunder-
stands  the  nature  of  contract  negotiations  when  the  par-
ties have a continuing relationship.  The parties, in renew-
ing  an  old  collective-bargaining  agreement,  don’t  start  on 
an  empty  page.    Instead,  various  “long-settled”  terms—
like fair-share provisions—are taken as a given.  Brief for 
Governor Tom Wolf et al. 11; see Brief for New York City
Sergeants Benevolent Assn. as Amicus Curiae 18.  So the 
majority’s ruling does more than advance by a few years a 
future  renegotiation  (though  even  that  would  be  signifi-
cant).  In  most  cases,  it  commands  new  bargaining  over 
how  to  replace  a  term  that  the  parties  never  expected  to
change.  And not just new bargaining; given the interests 
at stake, complicated and possibly contentious bargaining