Top court's decision limits unions' power

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

A divided U.S. Supreme Court handed a setback to organized labor Monday by placing new limits on the ability of unions to demand fees from some public sector workers.

In a 5-4 vote, the high court invalidated Illinois rules requiring union payments from people who provide in-home care for disabled Medicaid recipients. The majority said those rules violated the workers' constitutional rights to freedom of speech and association because the home health care workers weren't true public employees.

"If we accepted Illinois' argument," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion, "we would approve an unprecedented violation of the bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support."

Left standing by the majority was a 1977 ruling that public sector employees could be compelled to pay for union representation as long as they don't have to cover the cost of political or ideological activities.

Alito called that decision "questionable" but stopped short of overturning it. He said the Service Employees International Union was asking the court to expand the precedent so it applied not just to "full-fledged public workers" but also to others deemed government employees for the sole purpose of unionization and the payment of dues.

Joining Alito's opinion were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy.

The ruling will directly affect about 12 states with similar rules and could have ramifications in the 26 states without "right to work" laws that let workers opt out of union dues. The dispute pitted labor unions and President Barack Obama's administration against right-to-work advocates.

The administration said in a statement that the White House was disappointed by the decision but remained committed to defending collective-bargaining rights.

The Illinois law resulted in fairer compensation and better job protection, the administration said. The ruling will make it more difficult for home health care workers to get "a fair shake in exchange for their hard work," while making it harder for elderly and disabled Americans to get care, it said.

The Illinois measure had been upheld by two lower courts.

Public-worker union rights have been a hot political and legal topic in recent years, highlighted by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's successful 2011 effort to curb collective bargaining rights there.

Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissent, said the court majority was wrong to bar Illinois from using a "tool that many have thought necessary to make collective bargaining work."

The majority offered no basis for its conclusion that home health care workers, paid with government money, aren't true public employees, Kagan wrote. She was joined by justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

Kagan said the majority didn't justify what she called its failure to abide by the 1977 ruling, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.

"Today's opinion takes the tack of throwing everything against the wall in the hope that something might stick," she said.

The Illinois fight stemmed from a series of laws and executive orders backed by Democratic governors Rod Blagojevich and Pat Quinn, who took office in 2009.

The rules were challenged by eight caregivers, seven of whom provide in-home services to family members. They said the rules violated their First Amendment rights by requiring them to accept representation on issues of public concern, specifically the state's policies on distributing Medicaid benefits.

Illinois and union officials say the arrangements have benefited caregivers, increasing wages for some workers from $7 an hour in 2003 to $13 an hour by the end of this year.

The case is Harris v. Quinn, 11-681.

Information for this article was contributed by Elizabeth Campbell of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 07/01/2014