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Page Number: 67.0

12  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

make  employment  decisions  affecting  expression.    And  in 
both,  the  Court  struck  the  same  basic  balance,  enabling 
the government to curb speech when—but only when—the
regulation  was  designed  to  protect  its  managerial  inter-
ests.  Consider the parallels:

Like  Pickering,  Abood  drew  the  constitutional  line  by 
analyzing  the  connection  between  the  government’s  man-
agerial  interests  and  different  kinds  of  expression.  The 
Court  first  discussed  the  use  of  agency  fees  to  subsidize
the  speech  involved  in  “collective  bargaining,  contract
administration,  and  grievance  adjustment.”    431  U. S.,  at 
225–226.  It understood that expression (really, who would 
not?) as intimately tied to the workplace and employment 
relationship.  The  speech  was  about  “working  conditions, 
pay, discipline, promotions, leave, vacations, and termina-
tions,” Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri, 564 U. S. 379, 391 
(2011);  the  speech  occurred  (almost  always)  in  the  work-
place; and the speech was directed (at least mainly) to the
employer.  As noted earlier, Abood described the manage-
rial  interests  of  employers  in  channeling  all  that  speech
through  a  single  union.    See  431  U. S.,  at  220–222,  224– 
226; supra, at 3.  And so Abood allowed the government to
mandate  fees  for  collective  bargaining—just  as  Pickering
permits  the  government  to  regulate  employees’  speech  on 
similar workplace matters.  But still, Abood realized that 
compulsion could go too far.  The Court barred the use of 
fees  for  union  speech  supporting  political  candidates  or 
“ideological  causes.”  431  U. S.,  at  235.    That  speech,  it
understood,  was  “unrelated  to  [the  union’s]  duties  as
exclusive  bargaining  representative,”  but  instead  was 
directed at the broader public sphere.  Id., at 234.  And for 
that  reason,  the  Court  saw  no  legitimate  managerial
interests  in  compelling  its  subsidization.    The  employees’
First  Amendment  claims  would  thus  prevail—as,  again,
they would have under Pickering. 

Abood thus dovetailed with the Court’s usual attitude in