Source: http://www.capoliticalreview.com/tag/friedrichs-v-cta/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 04:34:12+00:00

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California politics could be shaken up this spring when the U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decisions in two potentially landmark cases.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution thought they were keeping the judiciary out of politics, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Today the Supreme Court exercises so much power over our lives that if one of the justices mentions retirement, half the country experiences chest pains. And the stress is not unwarranted: Policies that were created by judges can be reversed by judges.
Right now the Supreme Court is considering whether to change the rules that control state redistricting, and whether to abolish mandatory union dues for public employees. The impact of the two decisions could make California’s predictable elections a lot less predictable.
In the redistricting case, Evenwel v. Abbott, the issue is whether Texas should be allowed — perhaps even required — to draw its legislative district boundaries based on eligible voters instead of total population.
For example, an Assembly district might have a population of half a million people but far fewer citizens who are eligible to vote. The court’s ruling could result in the district’s boundaries being redrawn to take in new geographical areas with more citizens and fewer immigrants. The decision could scramble the political map in Texas and potentially in other states with a high proportion of non-citizens, including California.
Until the mid-20th century, the federal courts stayed out of state redistricting. That changed when Chief Justice Earl Warren decided to get involved.
As governor of California in the 1940s, Warren had opposed a plan to draw district lines based on population instead of geographical area. At the time, rural Senate districts with fewer voters had the same political power as urban districts jammed with voters. The votes of city residents were, in a sense, unequal to the votes of rural residents. Los Angeles was outvoted on everything.
As chief justice, Warren had second thoughts about the fairness of that arrangement. In two landmark decisions, Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims, the court imposed a “one person, one vote” standard that required voting districts to have roughly equal populations.
But the Evenwel case could be a new landmark.
Public employee unions have had the power to collect fees from non-members ever since the Supreme Court ruled in a 1977 case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, that mandatory dues were legal as long as no one was forced to pay for a union’s political activities. But the teachers argue that everything the union does is a political activity, because it negotiates with government officials for salaries and benefits paid from tax dollars.
If the court rules against the union, the continuous stream of cash that has flowed from teachers’ paychecks to the California Teachers Association could slow to a trickle. That may limit the CTA’s campaign spending, which for decades has flooded the political landscape to elect union-friendly lawmakers. Other public employee unions could find themselves in the same boat.
The Supreme Court’s decisions could unsettle California politics virtually overnight.
We’ve had some low-turnout elections, but this must be some kind of record. Thirty-eight million people live in California and its future may be decided by nine voters.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear from 10 teachers Monday in a case that could upend decades of labor law by granting public-sector workers the right refuse to pay union dues.
Generations of lawmakers and legal experts have struggled with the question of whether unions can require mandatory payments. The Supreme Court ruled in the 1977 case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that unions can collect dues so long as the mandatory payments are used solely on representation costs and not political activities. Workers are allowed to pay fees instead of full dues if they don’t want to fund the political activities of the union.
Rebecca Friedrichs and the nine other teachers, however, don’t want to make any payments to the California Teachers Association (CTA). They also assert the process to opt-out of paying full dues or partial fees should be an opt-in system instead. The Supreme Court agreed Jun. 30 to hear their case. Here are the nine most important facts about Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.
The question before the court is whether the teachers have the right to disassociate from their union. To the teachers and their supporters, the case could mean the end of laws that restrict worker freedom. To opponents, though, unions are what give workers a voice and limiting their power will adversely impact their ability to fairly communicate and negotiate with their employers.
The teachers have argued mandatory union payments violate their constitutional right to free-speech. They said the union often engages in activities or takes a position they neither support nor wish to fund. The union disputes the argument by noting they are legally compelled to represent the teachers regardless of whether they pay dues. Therefore its only fair all workers should have to pitch into the cost of representation.
When a union gets voted in as the exclusive representative for a workplace, they are required by law to collectively bargain for all the workers. Unions often warn workers could just free-ride on those benefits were dues an option.
The teachers are allowed to leave their union but are still required to pay the representation fees. If they leave, they lose their liability services and the ability to talk at union meetings.
It all started when Friedrichs, while teaching out of Buena Park, Calif., tried to leave her union. She felt it benefited its members at the expense of the students. Though she could leave and forfeit most union benefits, she was still forced to continue paying dues. She and a group of other teachers were left with no choice but to file a lawsuit in April of 2013.
Her first encounter with the union culture was when she was an assistant teacher at the beginning of her career. At the time, she said she felt as though the teacher who worked in the classroom next to hers was abusive towards her students. The teacher, she said, couldn’t be fired because the union had implemented a seniority structure. Friedrichs eventually took a leadership position in the union but was still unable to change what she saw as a bad culture.
A decision in favor of the teachers is likely to go beyond just schools. All government workers could be granted the right to stop funding union activities since the teachers are technically public-sector employees. Such a decision could be devastating to the labor movement which has already lost a lot of members in the private-sector.
Huebert adds the case should only impact public-sector workers and not private. The Supreme Court will decide on a wide variety of issues this session, from how sentencing hearings are conducted to whether colleges admission offices should consider race. NYU Law Professor Richard Epstein, though, says the Friedrichs case could very well be the most important.
The case seeks to reverse the decision in Abood, which has allowed public-sector unions to require mandatory payments for nearly three decades. Abood also dealt with teachers, but the decision set a precedent that impacted all public-sector employees.
4. Are Public Sector Unions Done For? Probably Not.
Unions have argued on numerous occasions the case is aimed at destroying the labor movement. Membership is likely to go down, but many workers are still likely to stay unionized. Former Supreme Court Clerk Carrie Severino notes the case will not take down public-sector unions.
Federal employees already have the right to not fund unions, yet membership is still fairly high. In states that have passed right-to-work legislation, all workers are allowed the same privilege, yet it hasn’t destroyed the unions. The policy, which has passed in 25 states, outlaws mandatory union dues or fees as a condition of employment. Terry Pell, a lawyer representing the teachers, predicts the membership drop will be slight.
Pell said the biggest difference once right-to-work is passed is that the salaries of union leaders go down.
Collective bargaining is the burden put on unions when they become the exclusive representative for a workplace. It means they are required by law to benefit all the workers they represent. Collective bargaining already comes with a huge benefit often overlooked during the free-rider debate.
The Heritage Foundation notes in a fact sheet that the union claim is very misleading. Exclusive representation is not the only way a union can organize workers. Unions can choose to only represent dues paying workers by becoming a member-only organization. A member-only union, though, would not have monopoly rights and therefore other unions could try to organize the same workplace. It’s an option they tend to avoid.
Supporters are optimistic the court will side with Friedrichs given recent decisions. In the 2015 case Harris v. Quinn, the court ruled Illinois state home healthcare workers could not be forced to pay union dues. The decision found a middle ground by only applying to the workers upon whom the case was centered.
The court was faced with the question of whether home healthcare providers were public-sector employees. State healthcare workers are required to fund the union which represents them. The Friedrichs case has a much broader scope. Teachers are already considered public employees, therefore a decision in their favor is much more likely to impact all government workers.
The Center for Individual Rights (CIR) is a non-profit public interest firm representing Friedrichs and the other teachers involved in the case. Pell said they looked for teachers that were willing to join onto a lawsuit. For a case to be considered by the courts, the plaintiffs must have standing by proving in some way they have suffered damages.
Pell added that the response showed them many teachers were discontent with their union. The case has also attracted a lot of attention from outside groups and lawmakers. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute have all filed legal briefs in support of the teachers. The organizations are primarily conservative and libertarian leaning. Labor unions have condemned the lawsuit as being nothing more than a coordinated attack by the right.
Nevertheless Labor unions are some of the most powerful political entities and fighting them is not an easy task. The AFL-CIO, AFSCME and the Service Employees International Union among others have banned together against the teachers. Even local unions have spoken out about the case. Some of the most influential unions have also submitted legal briefs urging the justices to rule against the teachers.
Union leaders have claimed the case is an attack on the rights of workers to collectively come together. The teachers in the case, though, counter the argument by noting its actually about giving workers a choice.
The case does not seek to prevent workers from organizing despite the union claim. A decision in favor of the teachers would be very unlikely to outlaw the right to unionize. Instead it would simply mean public-sector employees would have the right not to participate or fund their workplace union if they so choose.
Friedrichs notes unions would be compelled to do what’s best of their members if workers were free to leave.
CTA states the opt-out system is legal and fair. It allows workers the right to refrain from funding union political activities. If a worker doesn’t want their dues going to politics they can simply sign a form and mail it to the union. The teachers included as a secondary point to their lawsuit that an opt-in system would be fairer. Essentially public-sector workers would have to request to join a union instead of getting automatically enrolled.
Critics contest opting out is not always easy for workers. Rules regarding membership are not the same in every union. Most unions only allow members to leave at certain points in the year. These opt-out windows are often not disclosed to members. Unions have also been known to ignore opt-out requests.
In less than one week the U.S. Supreme Court will begin to hear arguments in the case Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, to determine whether unions can force public employees to fund speech through collective bargaining with which they might disagree. The case could result in a landmark decision impacting the First Amendment rights of millions of public sector workers nationwide. The California Policy Center joins hundreds of other organizations and millions of individual activists in urging the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the plaintiffs.
If the justices rule in favor of Friedrichs, the decision would not only take away government union’s ability to get public employees who do not pay them fired in the half of the states – most definitely including California – which do not have right-to-work, but would allow public workers to opt out of their union without needing to renew their objection every year. Here in California, the decision, which is expected in June 2016, would impact well over 1 million state and local public employees who are currently unionized.
The Friedrichs case rests on the argument that anything and everything that public employee unions negotiate is inherently political. We couldn’t agree more. To state an obvious example, negotiations between unions and elected officials over public employee pensions and pay are arguments over how elected officials should use public money – an inherently political question. Conceding to demands for higher salaries during an economic downturn – or at any time, for that matter – is a political choice. When public employees make more, either other services are cut, or taxes are increased. These are political decisions, not mere employer/employee issues.
While how public agencies spend taxpayers’ money is obviously a matter of public policy, the work rules negotiated by government unions also are inherently political. Union negotiated rules governing California’s system of public education provide examples of this in the form of “lifetime tenure” – awarded after less than two years in the classroom, dismissal procedures that make it nearly impossible to fire incompetent teachers, and “last in first out” layoff policies that reward seniority over merit. Conscientious teachers can be forgiven for believing these union rules, among others, are public policy decisions, inherently political, that have harmed California’s children. Yet they are forced to pay to support the unions who negotiated these rules.
The Friedrichs case, despite an avalanche of well-funded propaganda from unions, is not about whether or not unions even belong in the public sector. The point of the Friedrichs case, again, is that everything that public sector unions negotiate for is inherently political. And because they are inherently political, public employees should not be forced to fund these unions if they don’t want to, because that is a violation of their First Amendment free speech rights. You don’t have to restrict the scope of your argument to the explicitly political activities of government unions to make this case. Because everything government unions do, everything they fight for, affects government policy.
As a result, members of government unions should not be merely permitted to opt-out of the acknowledged “political” portion of their union dues, the amounts spent on political campaigns and lobbyists. They should be allowed to opt-0ut of paying all of it, including the so-called “agency fee.” And because these unions have made the “opt-out” process a difficult bureaucratic ordeal, where members can only opt-out during a certain limited time each year, and have to do that over and over again, year after year, paying union dues should instead depend on an “opt-in” process. This would mean the government unions themselves would have to obtain affirmative consent, year after year, in order to continue to collect dues from government workers.
Government unions are not just inherently political in everything they do. Their agenda is inherently in conflict with the public interest. Unlike private unions, government unions elect their own bosses. Unlike private unions, government unions can demand pay and benefits without having nearly the same concerns about how that may impact the financial health of their organization. And unlike private unions, government unions run the government bureaucracy, which means they can more easily intimidate their opponents. For these reasons, perhaps the Friedrichs case doesn’t go far enough. But it’s a very good start.

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