Opinion ID: 756711
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Vital policy interests of the government.

Text: 55 The second prong under Lehnert considers whether the compelled fee is justified by vital policy interests of the government. Lehnert, 500 U.S. at 520, 111 S.Ct. 1950. In the context of unions, those policy interests included both labor peace and avoiding free riders, and with the bar the state's interest in regulating the legal profession and improving the quality of legal services justified the compelled association inherent in the integrated bar. Keller, 496 U.S. at 13-14, 110 S.Ct. 2228. While the Regents do not address this prong, 9 throughout this appeal the Regents have focused on their interest in education. The Regents also speak of the government's interest in shared governance, or in other words the interest in allowing students to share in the running of the Wisconsin University System. 56 No doubt there is a vital interest in education, and the government has an interest in allowing students to share the governance of the university system (although whether the latter interest is also vital is not clear). However, for the vital policy interest to survive scrutiny under Lehnert, it must justify compelled funding of the private or quasi-private activity. Neither of these interests presents a vital interest in compelling students to fund private organizations which engage in political and ideological speech. Again, Lehnert, 500 U.S. at 521, 111 S.Ct. 1950, illustrates this. 57 In Lehnert non-union members challenged various union expenditures, including lobbying activities related not to the ratification or implementation of a dissenter's collective-bargaining agreement, but to financial support of the employee's profession or of public employees generally.... Id. at 522, 111 S.Ct. 1950 (plurality). In determining the constitutionality of these expenditures, a plurality of the Court analyzed the vital policy interests involved--labor peace and preventing free riders--and concluded [l]abor peace is not especially served by ... charging objecting employees for lobbying, electoral and other political activities that do not relate to their collective-bargaining agreement. Id. at 521, 111 S.Ct. 1950. Lehnert further explained that labor peace would not be furthered: [B]ecause worker and union cannot be said to speak with one voice, it would not further cause harmonious industrial relations to compel objecting employees to finance union political activities as well as their own. Id. 58 While labor peace is not at issue here, the above quotation illustrates the importance of a common cause for justifying the compelled funding. In the context of union cases, where the union and nonunion members share a common cause, a vital policy interest justified the compelled funding. But where that was missing, the expenditure could not be justified. In this case while there may be a common cause in education and shared governance, there is no common cause between private organizations which engage in political and ideological speech and the objecting students. Thus, we see no vital policy interest supporting compelled funding of the private associations. And we might even conclude that far from serving the school's interest in education, forcing objecting students to fund objectionable organizations undermines that interest. In some courses students are likely taught the values of individualism and dissent. Yet despite the objecting students' dissent they must fund organizations promoting opposing views or they don't graduate. 59 The Regents also speak of a free-rider problem, claiming that because private organizations must open their activities to all students, allowing objecting students to withhold funding would result in a free-rider problem similar to that acknowledged as a vital policy interest in Abood. Where, as here, the Regents' own policy allows nonstudents to join registered student organizations and attend campus activities, they cannot legitimately claim a concern over free riders. Most student organizations subject to this open-access policy receive no funds. Free riders might more accurately describe those organizations that receive a share of the mandatory fees. 60 Even if objecting students were labeled free riders, the basis underlying the free-rider concern in Abood is absent here. In Abood, in holding that an employee's free speech rights are not unconstitutionally burdened because the employee opposes positions taken by a union in its capacity as collective-bargaining representative, the Court clearly recognized that to hold otherwise would create a free-rider problem. The reason a free-rider problem exists in the context of unions, however, is significant (and in the case of student organizations lacking): In the case of unions, the government has imposed on unions the duty to fairly represent all employees, including those who do not belong to the union, and these legal requirements often entail expenditure of much time and money. 431 U.S. at 221, 97 S.Ct. 1782. Forcing non-union employees to fund the union's collective bargaining agreement thus counteracts the incentive that employees might otherwise have to become free riders--to refuse to contribute to the union while obtaining benefits of union representation that necessarily accrue to all employees. Id. at 222, 97 S.Ct. 1782. 61 Conversely, here the private organizations which the plaintiffs object to funding do not act in a representative capacity for the students and have no obligation to fairly represent the students, as the union does for non-union members. Rather, the private organizations' advocacy and speech further positions espoused by the organizations and their members. The political and ideological activities of private organizations are not limited to the university setting, and have ramifications that extend into the diverse aspects of the student's life. In fact, many of the ideological and political activities and speech to which the plaintiffs object occurred off-campus, further limiting the benefit to objecting students. These differences make the free-rider concern inapplicable here. 10 See also Ellis, 466 U.S. at 452, 104 S.Ct. 1883 (holding that the union could not force nonunion employees to fund the recruitment of workers outside the bargaining unit because it did not implicate a free-rider concern: the free rider Congress had in mind was the employee the union was required to represent and from whom it could not withhold benefits obtained for its members. Nonbargaining unit organization is not directed at the employee.); Lehnert, 500 U.S. at 521, 111 S.Ct. 1950 (rejecting union's free-rider justification for lobbying expenditures, holding that the free-rider concern is inapplicable because [t]he balancing of monetary and other policy choices performed by legislatures is not limited to the workplace but typically has ramifications that extend into diverse aspects of an employee's life.). 62