The Heritage Insider: Supreme Court to decide whether workers have a choice, Obama's gun action is legally meaningless, the flaw in Obama's plan to defeat ISIS, and more
January 9, 2016 WORKER CHOICE On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear a case that could make all union dues—not just the portion spent on politics—voluntary for all government employees. A key argument made by the plaintiffs is that when public employees collectively bargain with the state, they are engaging in an inherently political act—and therefore fees for representation constitute compelled speech speech just as much as the portion of dues that would go to fund political candidates. “Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association is being painted as a battle against unions, but that characterization misses the more fundamental point of the case. While the unions are, indeed, politically powerful and derive much of their power from dues and fees collected from teachers, the unions are just instruments in the collective bargaining process, and it’s the process itself that’s really at issue. “The plaintiffs are 10 nonunion teachers who argue that they should not be fo...