The Supreme Court issued a ruling in Janus v. AFSCME that public employees do not have to pay fees to unions to cover the costs of collective bargaining. The court, split along partisan lines, overruled 41 years of precedent in deciding that requiring employees to pay fees violates their First Amendment rights..
With the decision, public-sector employees around the nation will no longer have to pay fees or dues to their unions, even if those unions collectively bargain on behalf of those employees—likely impacting union membership and revenues nationwide.
The 5-4 ruling overturned a 1977 Supreme Court precedent that had permitted these so-called agency fees, which have been collected from millions of workers who opt not to join unions in lieu of union dues to fund non-political activities such as collective bargaining. The court’s conservative justices were in the majority, with the liberal justices dissenting.
And with that, this news:
Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court’s decisive man in the middle on abortion, gay rights and other contentious issues, announced his retirement Wednesday, giving President Donald Trump a golden chance to cement conservative control of the nation’s highest court.
SCOTUS becomes the focal point of divisive politics in a divisive year…
