Kevin Daley of the Daily Caller explains why the U.S. Supreme Court’s newest member holds the critical vote in an important case this term.
Justice Neil Gorsuch is expected to cast the deciding vote … in one of the landmark cases of the U.S. Supreme Court’s term, a challenge to the constitutionality of mandatory union fees.
Over five-million government employees are required by law to pay dues to public-sector unions. The Supreme Court has closely divided over the legality of forced dues in the recent past, so Gorsuch, as the newest justice, likely holds the decisive fifth vote in Monday’s case.
Under a 1977 Supreme Court precedent called Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, labor bosses are allowed to collect compulsory dues, or fair-share fees, from public employees since union negotiators represent all government workers for purposes of collective bargaining — even if they are not union members. …
… Several justices in recent years expressed serious reservations about mandatory dues in a pair of labor cases argued between 2012 and 2014. The Court seemed poised to overturn Abood in Jan. 2016, when it heard a direct First Amendment challenge to the fair-share regime. Justice Antonin Scalia died just one month after the arguments in that case, Friedrichs v. CTA. The eight-member panel deadlocked four to four so a binding ruling was never issued.
Shortly after Gorsuch’s confirmation, the high court agreed to revisit the issue in hopes of reaching a definitive decision. The new case, Janus v. American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), arose in Illinois. The plaintiff, Mark Janus, is a child-support specialist who pays roughly $600 per year to an AFSCME local, though he is not a member and disagrees with a range of positions the group takes.
