Court Opinion

ID: 9426791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:57.440072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:03.191887
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
concurring.
Had I joined the plurality opinion in Elrod v. Burns, 427 U. S. 347 (1976), I would find it virtually impossible to join the Courtis opinion in this case. In Elrod, the plurality stated:
“The illuminating source to which we turn in performing the task [of constitutional adjudication] is the system *243of government the First Amendment was intended to protect, a democratic system whose proper functioning is indispensably dependent on the unfettered judgment of each citizen on matters of political concern. Our decision in obedience to the guidance of that source does not outlaw political parties or political campaigning and management. Parties are free to exist and their concomitant activities are free to continue. We require only that the rights of every citizen to believe as he will and to act and associate according to his beliefs be free to continue as well.” Id., at 372.
I do not read the Court’s opinion as leaving intact the “unfettered judgment of each citizen on matters of political concern” when it holds that Michigan may, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, require an objecting member of a public employees’ union to contribute to the funds necessary for the union to carry out its bargaining activities. Nor does the Court’s opinion leave such a member free “to believe as he will and to act and associate according to his beliefs.” I agree with the Court, and with the views expressed in Mr. Justice Powell’s opinion concurring in the judgment, that the positions taken by public employees’ unions in connection with their collective-bargaining activities inevitably touch upon political concern if the word “political” be taken in its normal meaning. Success in pursuit of a particular collective-bargaining goal will cause a public program or a public agency to be administered in one way; failure will result in its being administered in another way.
I continue to believe, however, that the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Powell in Elrod v. Burns, supra, which I joined, correctly stated the governing principles of First and Fourteenth Amendment law in the case of public employees such as this. I am unable to see a constitutional distinction between a governmentally imposed requirement that a public employee be a Democrat or Republican or else lose his job, *244and a similar requirement that a public employee contribute to the collective-bargaining expenses of a labor union. I therefore join the opinion and judgment of the Court.