Opinion ID: 2226822
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Abood

Text: In Abood v Detroit Board of Education, supra , the defendant board entered into a collective bargaining agreement with the Detroit Federation of Teachers, the certified exclusive representative of teachers employed by the board. The agreement implemented an agency shop [17] arrangement whereby all board-employed teachers were required to pay a service fee to the union as a condition of their employment, although they were not required to actually join the union. Certain objecting teachers filed an action against the board, the union, and others, in circuit court alleging that the agency shop contract violated their First Amendment rights, in that the plaintiffs were opposed to collective bargaining in the public sector generally; and that the union was using the agency service fees to support ideological and political causes which were unrelated to collective bargaining activities and which were opposed by the plaintiffs. The circuit court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment, [18] finding the agency shop arrangement inoffensive to the plaintiffs' constitutional rights. During the pendency of the plaintiffs' subsequent appeal from the summary judgment, this Court decided Smigel v Southgate Community School Dist, 388 Mich 531; 202 NW2d 305 (1972), which held that the Michigan public employment relations act (PERA), as then written, did not authorize or permit agency shop contracts in the public employment sphere. The Abood application for leave to appeal then reached this Court. On the authority of Smigel the circuit court's summary judgment was vacated and the case was remanded to that court for further proceedings consonant herewith, sub nom Warczak v Detroit Board of Education, 389 Mich 755 (1972). The Legislature then amended PERA to expressly authorize agency shop contracts in the public sector. 1973 PA 25; MCL 423.210(1); MSA 17.455(10)(1). On remand to the circuit court, the defendants filed a new motion for summary judgment based on the premise that the PERA amendment authorizing agency shops should be given retroactive effect (thereby effectively reversing Smigel). The circuit court granted the new summary judgment motion. On appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals, the trial court was reversed. Abood v Detroit Board of Education, 60 Mich App 92; 230 NW2d 322 (1975). The Court of Appeals held that the legislative amendment to PERA concerning agency shop agreements was prospective only. This holding would have been dispositive of the Abood case, since Abood involved a pre-PERA amendment agency shop agreement. [19] However, the Court of Appeals went on to frame the following issue at 60 Mich App 98: Does the agency shop clause violate plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights securing freedom of speech and freedom of association? The Court of Appeals then discussed the United States Supreme Court's decisions in Hanson and Street and concluded: We have before us then, two powerful countervailing public policies. We are asked, on the one hand, to preserve freedom of expression, and, on the other, to promote labor stability. But freedom of expression is a constitutional right so basic to our form of government that it must be jealously guarded. This is particularly true where, as here, employees are compelled by the government to support the collective bargaining activities of an organization which they prefer not to join. Justice Douglas expressed this concern well in his concurring opinion in Street: `If an association is compelled, the individual should not be forced to surrender any matters of conscience, belief, or expression. He should be allowed to enter the group with his own flag flying, whether it be religious, political, or philosophical; nothing that the group does should deprive him of the privilege of preserving and expressing his agreement, disagreement, or dissent, whether it coincides with the view of the group, or conflicts with it in minor or major ways; and he should not be required to finance the promotion of causes with which he disagrees.' 367 US at 776   . Therefore, we conclude that the agency shop clause, as prospectively authorized by the amendment to MCL 423.210; MSA 17.455(10), could violate plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. 60 Mich App 100. The record presented was, however, found to be inadequate to merit relief: To reiterate briefly, employees who are forced to contribute service fees to a collective bargaining representative may not be deprived of First Amendment freedom of expression. But, in order to preserve this right, the employee must make known to the union those causes and candidates to which he objects. The remedy then would be restitution to the employee of that portion of his money expended by the union over his objection. 60 Mich App 102. This Court subsequently denied leave to appeal from the Court of Appeals decision. 395 Mich 755-756 (1975). On appeal to the United States Supreme Court, the judgment of the Michigan Court of Appeals was vacated and the case was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings. The majority opinion framed the following issue: The issue before us is whether [the agency shop] arrangement violates the constitutional rights of government employees who object to public-sector unions as such or to various union activities financed by the compulsory service fees. Abood v Detroit Board of Education, 431 US 209, 211. The majority observed that [t]o compel employees financially to support their collective-bargaining representative has an impact on their First Amendment interests, 431 US 222, and then considered the applicability of Hanson and Street to the Abood facts: The distinctive nature of public-sector bargaining has led to widespread discussion about the extent to which the law governing labor relations in the private sector provides an appropriate model. To take but one example, there has been considerable debate about the desirability of prohibiting public employee unions from striking, a step that the State of Michigan itself has taken [MCL 423.202]. But although Michigan has not adopted the federal model of labor relations in every respect, it has determined that labor stability will be served by a system of exclusive representation and the permissive use of an agency shop in public employment. As already stated, there can be no principled basis for according that decision less weight in the constitutional balance than was given in Hanson to the congressional judgment reflected in the Railway Labor Act. The only remaining constitutional inquiry evoked by the appellants' argument, therefore, is whether a public employee has a weightier First Amendment interest than a private employee in not being compelled to contribute to the costs of exclusive union representation. We think he does not. (Footnotes omitted.) 431 US 229. Shortly thereafter the Court said: The differences between public- and private-sector collective bargaining simply do not translate into differences in First Amendment rights. Even those commentators most acutely aware of the distinctive nature of public-sector bargaining and most seriously concerned with its policy implications agree that `[t]he union security issue in the public sector    is fundamentally the same issue    as in the private sector   . No special dimension results from the fact that a union represents public rather than private employees.' Wellington & Winter, The Unions and the Cities (1971), pp 95-96. We conclude that the Michigan Court of Appeals was correct in viewing this Court's decisions in Hanson and Street as controlling in the present case insofar as the service charges are applied to collective-bargaining, contract administration, and grievance-adjustment purposes. 431 US 232. After the Court determined that the Abood record did not permit avoidance of the First Amendment issues raised, the following analysis and conclusion were stated: Our decisions establish with unmistakable clarity that the freedom of an individual to associate for the purpose of advancing beliefs and ideas is protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. E.g., Elrod v Burns, 427 US 347, 355-357 [96 S Ct 2673; 49 L Ed 2d 547 (1976)] (plurality opinion); Cousins v Wigoda, 419 US 477, 487 [95 S Ct 541; 42 L Ed 2d 595 (1975)]; Kusper v Pontikes, 414 US 51, 56-57 [94 S Ct 303; 38 L Ed 2d 260 (1973)]; NAACP v Alabama ex rel Patterson, 357 US 449, 460-461 [78 S Ct 1163; 2 L Ed 2d 1488 (1958)]. Equally clear is the proposition that a government may not require an individual to relinquish rights guaranteed him by the First Amendment as a condition of public employment. E.g., Elrod v Burns, supra, at 357-360, and cases cited; Perry v Sindermann, 408 US 593 [92 S Ct 2694; 33 L Ed 2d 570 (1972)]; Keyishian v Board of Regents, 385 US 589 [87 S Ct 675; 17 L Ed 2d 629 (1967)]. The appellants argue that they fall within the protection of these cases because they have been prohibited, not from actively associating, but rather from refusing to associate. They specifically argue that they may constitutionally prevent the Union's spending a part of their required service fees to contribute to political candidates and to express political views unrelated to its duties as exclusive bargaining representative. We have concluded that this argument is a meritorious one. One of the principles underlying the Court's decision in Buckley v Valeo, 424 US 1 [96 S Ct 612; 46 L Ed 2d 659 (1976)], was that contributing to an organization for the purpose of spreading a political message is protected by the First Amendment. Because `[m]aking a contribution    enables like-minded persons to pool their resources in furtherance of common political goals,' id., at 22, the Court reasoned that limitations upon the freedom to contribute `implicate fundamental First Amendment interests,' id., at 23. The fact that the appellants are compelled to make, rather than prohibited from making, contributions for political purposes works no less an infringement of their constitutional rights. For at the heart of the First Amendment is the notion that an individual should be free to believe as he will, and that in a free society one's beliefs should be shaped by his mind and his conscience rather than coerced by the State. See Elrod v Burns, supra, at 356-357; Stanley v Georgia, 394 US 557, 565 [89 S Ct 1243; 22 L Ed 2d 541 (1969)]; Cantwell v Connecticut, 310 US 296, 303-304 [60 S Ct 900; 84 L Ed 1213; 128 ALR 1352 (1940)]. And the freedom of belief is no incidental or secondary aspect of the First Amendment's protections: `If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.' West Virginia Bd of Ed v Barnette, 319 US 624, 642 [63 S Ct 1178; 87 L Ed 1628; 147 ALR 674 (1943)]. These principles prohibit a State from compelling any individual to affirm his belief in God, Torcaso v Watkins, 367 US 488 [81 S Ct 1680; 6 L Ed 2d 982 (1961)], or to associate with a political party, Elrod v Burns, supra ; see 427 US, 363-364, fn 17, as a condition of retaining public employment. They are no less applicable to the case at bar, and they thus prohibit the appellees from requiring any of the appellants to contribute to the support of an ideological cause he may oppose as a condition of holding a job as a public school teacher. (Footnotes omitted.) 431 US 233-235. With reference to the issue framed by the United States Supreme Court, p 101, supra, we read Abood as holding: (1) that, as in Hanson, the State of Michigan's authorization of agency shop agreements in the public sector served a sufficiently compelling state interest in the achievement of labor stability to permit impingement on public employees' First Amendment rights to the extent of requiring payment of service fees for purposes germane to the collective bargaining duties of the teachers' union; and (2) that to the extent that agency fees were exacted and used for purposes beyond or apart from those activities related to collective bargaining, the plaintiffs had stated a claim upon which relief could be granted under the First Amendment. [20] With the foregoing understanding of Abood and its progenitors in mind, we now proceed to our analysis of the present case.