Opinion ID: 4453185
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Good‐faith Defense under Wyatt I

Text: Like our sister circuits, we read the Court’s language in Wyatt I and Lugar, supplemented by Justice Kennedy’s opin‐ ion concurring in Wyatt I, as a strong signal that the Court in‐ tended (when the time was right) to recognize a good‐faith defense in section 1983 actions when the defendant reasona‐ bly relies on established law. This is not, we stress, a simple “mistake of law” defense. Neither CMS nor AFSCME made No. 19‐1553 25 any mistake about the state of the law during the years be‐ tween 1982 and June 27, 2018, when Janus II was handed down. Abood was the operative decision from the Supreme Court from 1977 onward, until the Court exercised its exclu‐ sive prerogative to overrule that case. Like its counterparts around the country, the State of Illinois relied on Abood when it adopted a labor relations scheme providing for exclusive representation of public‐sector workers and the remit of fair‐ share fees to the recognized union. The union then relied on that state law in its interactions with other actors. We realize that there were signals from some Justices dur‐ ing the years leading up to Janus II that indicated they were willing to reconsider Abood, but that is hardly unique to this area. Sometimes such reconsideration happens, and some‐ times, despite the most confident predictions, it does not. See, e.g., Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428 (2000) (reaﬃrming the Miranda rule); see also Agostini, 521 U.S. at 237 (“We do not acknowledge, and we do not hold, that other courts should conclude our more recent cases have, by implication, overruled an earlier precedent.” (cleaned up)). The Rule of Law requires that parties abide by, and be able to rely on, what the law is, rather than what the readers of tea‐leaves pre‐ dict that it might be in the future. Notably, Mr. Janus does not allege that CMS and AFSCME, acting pursuant to state law, failed to comply with Abood. Mr. Janus says only that AFSCME did not act in good faith because it “spurned eﬀorts to have agency fees placed in escrow while their constitutionality was determined.” But AFSCME was under no legal obligation to escrow the fair‐ share fees for an indefinite period while the case was being litigated. Such an action, as AFSCME says, would (in the 26 No. 19‐1553 absence of a court order requiring security of some kind) “have been hard to square with the fiduciary duty the Union owes to its own members,” as the unit’s exclusive representa‐ tive. Until Janus II said otherwise, AFSCME had a legal right to receive and spend fair‐share fees collected from nonmembers as long as it complied with state law and the Abood line of cases. It did not demonstrate bad faith when it followed these rules.