Opinion ID: 106288
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The remedy:

Text: The Georgia court enjoined the unions and the railroads from certain future activities under the contract and also required repayment of dues paid by three employees who had protested use of union funds to support candidates or advocate views the protesting employees were against. I am not so sure as the Court that the injunction bars the collection of all funds from anyone who can show that he is opposed to the expenditure of any of his money for political purposes which he disapproves. So construed the injunction would take away the First Amendment right of employees to contribute their money voluntarily to a collective fund to be used to support and oppose candidates and causes even though individual contributors might disagree with particular choices of the group. So far as it may be ambiguous in this respect, I think the injunction should be modified to make sure that it does not interfere with the valuable rights of citizens to make their individual voices heard through voluntary collective action. For much the same basic reasons I think the injunction is too broad in that it runs not only in favor of the six protesting employees but also in favor of the class they represent. No one of that class is shown to have protested at all. The State Supreme Court nevertheless rejected the unions' contention that the so-called class was so indefinite, and its members so lacking in common, identifiable interests and mental attitudes, that a decree purporting to bind all of them, the railroads, the individual defendants and the unions, would not comport with the due process requirements of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. For reasons to be stated, I agree with this contention of the unions and consequently would hold that the judgment here cannot stand insofar as it purports finally to adjudicate rights as between the party defendants and railroad employees who were neither named party plaintiffs nor intervenors in the suit. The trial court defined the class as composed of all non-operating employees of the railroad defendants affected by, and opposed to, the . . . union shop agreements, who also are opposed to the collection and use of periodic dues, fees and assessments for support of ideological and political doctrines and candidates and legislative programs . . . . [17] As applied to the facts here, this class, as defined, could include employees not only from Georgia, but also from Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Illinois, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Kentucky and the District of Columbia. Genuine class actions result in binding judgments either for or against each member of the class. [18] Obviously, to make a judgment binding, the parties for or against whom it is to operate must be identifiable when the judgment is rendered. That would not be possible here since the only employees included in the class would be those who personally oppose the views they allege the union is using their dues to promote. This would make the class depend on the views entertained by each member, views which may change from day to day or year to year. Under these circumstances, when this decree was rendered neither the court nor the adverse parties nor anyone else could know, with certainty, to what individuals the unions owed a duty under the decree. In Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U. S. 32, 44, this Court pointed out the insuperable obstacles in attempting to treat as members of the same class parties to a contract such as the one here, some of whom might prefer to have the contract enforced and some of whom might not. Notice to persons whose rights are to be adjudicated is too important an element of our system of justice to permit a holding that this Georgia action has finally determined the issues for all the unidentifiable members of this class of plaintiffs spread territorially all the way from Florida to Illinois and from the District of Columbia to Missouri. After all the class suit doctrine is only a narrow judicially created exception to the rule that a case or controversy involves litigants who have been duly notified and given an opportunity to be present in court either in person or by counsel. [19] I would hold that there was no known common interest among the members of the described class here which justified this class action. From the very nature of the rights asserted, which depended on the unknown, perhaps fluctuating mental attitudes of employees, the rights of each employee were the basis for separable claims, in which the relief for each might vary as it did here as to the amount of damages awarded. Under these circumstances the class judgment should not stand. The decree, modified to eliminate its class aspect, does not unconditionally forbid the application of the contract to all people under all circumstances, as did the one we struck down in the Hanson case. The decree so modified would simply forbid use of the union-shop contract to bar employment of the six protesting employees so long as the unions do not discontinue the practice of spending union funds to support any causes or doctrines, political, economic or other, over the expressed objection of the six particular employees. Other employees who have not protested are of course in the entirely different position of voluntary or acquiescing dues payers, which they have every right to be, and since they have asked for no relief the decree in this case should not affect them. Thus modified I think the relief afforded by the decree is justified. The decree requires the union to refund dues, fees and assessments paid under protest by three of the complaining employees and exempts the six complaining employees from the payment of any union dues, fees or assessments so long as funds so received are used by the union to promote causes they are against. The state court found that these payments had been and would be made by these employees only because they had been compelled to join the union to save their jobs, despite their objections to paying the union so long as it used its funds for candidates, parties and ideologies contrary to these employees' wishes. The Court does not challenge this finding but nevertheless holds that relieving protesting workers of all payment of dues would somehow interfere with the union's statutory duty to act as a bargaining agent. In the first place, this would interfere with the union's activities only to the extent that it bars compulsion of dues payments from protesting workers to be used in some unknown part for unconstitutional purposes, and I think it perfectly proper to hold that such payments cannot be compelled. Furthermore, I think the remedy suggested by the Court will work a far greater interference with the union's bargaining activities because it will impose much greater trial and accounting burdens on both unions and workers. The Court's remedy is to give the wronged employees a right to a refund limited either to the proportion of the union's total expenditures made for such political activities or to the proportion . . . [of] expenditures for political purposes which he had advised the union he disapproved. It may be that courts and lawyers with sufficient skill in accounting, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus will be able to extract the proper microscopic answer from the voluminous and complex accounting records of the local, national and international unions involved. It seems to me, however, that while the Court's remedy may prove very lucrative to special masters, accountants and lawyers, this formula, with its attendant trial burdens, promises little hope for financial recompense to the individual workers whose First Amendment freedoms have been flagrantly violated. Undoubtedly, at the conclusion of this long exploration of accounting intricacies, many courts could with plausibility dismiss the workers' claims as de minimis when measured only in dollars and cents. I cannot agree to treat so lightly the value of a man's constitutional right to be wholly free from any sort of governmental compulsion in the expression of opinions. It should not be forgotten that many men have left their native lands, languished in prison, and even lost their lives, rather than give support to ideas they were conscientiously against. The three workers who paid under protest here were forced under authority of a federal statute to pay all current dues or lose their jobs. They should get back all they paid with interest. Unions composed of a voluntary membership, like all other voluntary groups, should be free in this country to fight in the public forum to advance their own causes, to promote their choice of candidates and parties and to work for the doctrines or the laws they favor. But to the extent that Government steps in to force people to help espouse the particular causes of a group, that group whether composed of railroad workers or lawyersloses its status as a voluntary group. The reason our Constitution endowed individuals with freedom to think and speak and advocate was to free people from the blighting effect of either a partial or a complete governmental monopoly of ideas. Labor unions have been peculiar beneficiaries of that salutary constitutional principle, and lawyers, I think, are charged with a peculiar responsibility to preserve and protect this principle of constitutional freedom, even for themselves. A violation of it, however small, is, in my judgment, prohibited by the First Amendment and should be stopped dead in its tracks on its first appearance. With so vital a principle at stake, I cannot agree to the imposition of parsimonious limitations on the kind of decree the courts below can fashion in their efforts to afford effective protection to these priceless constitutional rights. I would affirm the judgment of the Georgia Supreme Court, with the modifications I have suggested.