Court Opinion

ID: 9583325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:37:35.349236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:57.019556
License: Public Domain

PARKER, J.,
dissenting. The first five issues submitted to the jury, and their -answers thereto are as follows:
“1. Do the defendant Unions use dues and fees which they collect from railroad employees in support of or opposition to legislation which is not reasonably necessary or related to collective bargaining?
Answer: YES.
“2. Do the defendant Unions use dues and fees which they collect from railroad employees to influence votes in elections to public office?
Answer: YES.
“3. If so, is the same necessary or reasonably related to collective *507bargaining?
Answer: NO.
“4. Do the defendant Unions use dues and fees which they collect from railroad employees to make contributions to the campaigns of candidates for election to public office?
Answer: YES.
“5. If so, is the same necessary or reasonably related to collective bargaining?
Answer: NO.”
As I read the record, there was sufficient evidence produced by the plaintiffs to carry the case to the jury, and to permit them to answer the issues as they did. According to the jury verdict there is no question but that the defendant unions use dues and fees which they collect from their members to support or to oppose legislation not related to collective bargaining, to influence votes in election to public office, and to make contributions to the campaigns of candidates for election to public office. And according to the provisions of a contract between the Southern Railway Company and the defendant unions, an employee of the Southern Railway Company must join the defendant unions and pay the dues and fees demanded, or be discharged.
The fundamental issue is, can the defendant unions in a free United States, whose supreme national law is set forth in the United States Constitution, force an. employee of the Southern Railway to j oin their unions, and compel him financially to support and contribute to a political party and candidates, whose principles, projects, policies or programs he does not believe in, or may abhor, and does not want, and to contribute to support or oppose legislation not related to collective bargaining regardless of his views, or be discharged from his employment?
The specific and narrow question before us is the use made of the dues and fees demanded by the defendant unions, which plaintiffs must pay or be discharged. I take my stand not upon the so called "right to work” statute of North Carolina, but upon the United States Constitution.
Freedom of association, of thought and of speech is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution against any action by Congress. American Communications Asso. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 94 L. ed. 925; Lincoln Fed. L. U., v. Northwestern I. & M. Co., 335 U.S. 525, 93 L. ed. 212, 6 A.L.R. 2d 473; Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 89 L. ed. 430.
*508The right to work is protected by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. “It requires no argument to show that the right to work for a living in the common occupations of the community is of the very essence of the personal freedom and opportunity that it was the purpose of the Amendment to secure.” Truax v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33, 60 L. ed. 131. “It is said that the right to work, which the Court has frequently included in the concept of ‘liberty’ within the meaning of the Due Process Clauses (citing authority) may not be denied by Congress.” Railway Employes’ Dept. A. F. L. v. Hanson, 351 U.S. 225, 100 L. ed. 1112.
The Fifth Amendment, which relates to governmental action, federal in character, not to action 'by private persons, proyides that no person shall be deprived of his property without due process of law. Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U.S. 323, 70 L. ed. 969. In my opinion, it is not within the concept of due process to compel a person to contribute dues and fees from his earnings for the purpose of promoting political and ideological ends to which he is opposed and of electing men to public office whose purposes he may distrust, and if he does not so contribute to discharge him from his job with loss of seniority. To hold that this can be done would' be a taking of á portion of a person’s earnings without due process of law.
In Railway Employes’ Dept. A. F. L. v. Hanson, supra, the validity of a closed shop contract executed under Section 2, Eleventh of the Railway Labor Act, as amended (64 Stat. 1238) was upheld. However, the Court used this language: “If other conditions are in fact imposed, or if the exaction of dues, initiation fees, or assessments is used .as a cover for forcing ideological conformity or other action in contravention of the First Amendment, this judgment will not prejudice the decision in that case.” The question reserved is the very question presented here for decision.
In my opinion, no Act of Congress, no governmental action, federal in character, can compel a person to contribute dues and fees from his earnings to a labor union for the ends found by the jury’s verdict, so long as the First and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution remain .a part thereof guarding him from such an unwarranted invasion of his personal and property rights. I am fortified in my opinion by the fact that the Supreme Court of Georgia in Looper v. Georgia, Southern & Florida Railway Co., 213 Ga. 279, 99 S.E. 2d 101, which was decided 10 June 1957, more than a year after the decision in the Hanson case, has expressed a similar opinion on substantially similar facts averred in a petition, 'Stating that the question was expressly reserved in the Hanson case. If a member of a labor *509union desires to make a voluntary contribution for such purposes, he is free to do so.
If a political party dominant in the Congress should enact a statute requiring every federal employee to join a union, and compelling each one to contribute from his salary dues 'and fees to support the ideas, purposes and candidates of that party, and if he did not pay such dues and fees, he should be discharged from his employment, can there be any doubt that the ex/action of such dues 'and fees for such support would be held unconstitutional? A holding to the contrary would destroy constitutional government in this nation.
I vote to uphold the verdict and judgment of the trial court.