Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-1466_2b3j.pdf
Page Number: 26

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

21 

Opinion of the Court 

free 

rights, 

speech 

fundamental government interests.  Curtis, supra, at 374. 
The  Union  has  also  failed  to  show  that,  even  if  public 
employees  enjoyed 
the  First 
Amendment  was  nonetheless  originally  understood  to
allow  forced  subsidies  like  those  at  issue  here.    We  can 
safely  say  that,  at  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  First 
Amendment,  no  one  gave  any  thought  to  whether  public-
sector  unions  could  charge  nonmembers  agency  fees.
Entities  resembling  labor  unions  did  not  exist  at  the 
founding,  and  public-sector  unions  did  not  emerge  until
the  mid-20th  century. 
idea  of  public-sector 
unionization  and  agency  fees  would  astound  those  who
framed  and  ratified  the  Bill  of  Rights.7    Thus,  the  Union 
cannot  point  to  any  accepted  founding-era  practice  that 
even  remotely  resembles  the  compulsory  assessment  of 
agency  fees  from  public-sector  employees.  We  do  know, 
however,  that  prominent  members  of  the  founding
generation condemned laws requiring public employees to
affirm  or  support  beliefs  with  which  they  disagreed.  As 
noted,  Jefferson  denounced  compelled  support  for  such
beliefs as “ ‘sinful and tyrannical,’ ” supra, at 9, and others 
expressed similar views.8 
—————— 

The 

7 Indeed,  under  common  law,  “collective  bargaining  was  unlawful,” 
Teamsters  v.  Terry,  494  U. S.  558,  565–566  (1990)  (plurality  opinion);
see N. Citrine, Trade Union Law 4–7, 9–10 (2d ed. 1960); Notes, Legal­
ity of Trade Unions at Common Law, 25 Harv. L. Rev. 465, 466 (1912),
and into the 20th century, every individual employee had the “liberty of 
contract”  to  “sell  his  labor  upon  such  terms  as  he  deem[ed]  proper,” 
Adair  v.  United  States,  208  U. S.  161,  174–175  (1908);  see  R.  Morris,
Government and Labor in Early America 208, 529 (1946).  So even the 
concept of a private third-party entity with the power to bind employees 
on the terms of their employment likely would have been foreign to the 
Founders.    We  note  this  only  to  show  the  problems  inherent  in  the 
Union  respondent’s  argument;  we  are  not  in  any  way  questioning  the 
foundations of modern labor law. 

8 See,  e.g.,  Ellsworth,  The  Landholder,  VII  (1787),  in  Essays  on  the 
Constitution of the United States 167–171 (P. Ford ed. 1892); Webster,
On Test Laws, Oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration, and Partial Exclu­