The U.S. Supreme Court Exploits the First Amendment to Endorse Public Union “Free Riders”

by DeCarol Davis and Eduard Meleshinsky

With its decision yesterday in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, No. 16-1466 (U.S. June 27, 2018), the U.S. Supreme Court marches forward in its sweeping campaign to erode workers’ rights to engage in protected concerted activity. See, e.g., Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U.S. ___ (2018) (holding that an arbitration agreement can bind an employee to individual arbitration and thereby prevent that worker from participating in class or collective action) (read our analysis of the decision here). In a 5-4 opinion, authored by Justice Alito, with Justice Kagan dissenting (joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor), the Court held that state government workers who choose not to join a union do not have to pay a share of union dues for covering the cost of negotiating and administering collective bargaining agreements. The Court’s decision overrules its long-standing precedent in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), which required non-union employees to pay a portion of union dues, known as “agency fees,” to cover the out-of-pocket costs of collective bargaining and prevent “free riders” (i.e., workers who get the benefits of a union contract, like higher wages, better healthcare insurance, and competitive retirement plans without paying for it). Such mandatory agency fees do not fund any type of political campaigning by the union.

In Janus, the Supreme Court found that an Illinois law, which required public employees benefiting from union-organized collective bargaining agreements, to pay agency fees violated non-members’ free speech rights. Janus, No. 16-1466, at *1. The Court majority held that unions, in their “political and ideological projects” (including negotiating for better working conditions) may come at odds with a worker’s beliefs, and thereby violate a worker’s First Amendment rights. Id. The majority reasoned that requiring public employees to pay union dues would be “compelling” the worker to “subsidize” the speech of other private third party in violation of First Amendment. Id. at *9.

Justice Kagan, joined by the three other dissenting Justices, eloquently spoke to the majority’s radical departure from the Court’s established precedent:

There is no sugarcoating today’s opinion. The majority overthrows a decision entrenched in this Nation’s law—and in its economic life—for over 40 years. As a result, it prevents the American people, acting through their state and local officials, from making important choices about workplace governance. And it does so by weaponizing the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy.

Departures from stare decisis are supposed to be “exceptional action[s]” demanding “special justification,” (citation omitted)—but the majority offers nothing like that here. In contrast to the vigor of its attack on Abood, the majority’s discussion of stare decisis barely limps to the finish line. And no wonder: The standard factors this Court considers when deciding to overrule a decision all cut one way. Abood’s legal underpinnings have not eroded over time: Abood is now, as it was when issued, consistent with this Court’s First Amendment law. Abood provided a workable standard for courts to apply. And Abood has generated enormous reliance interests. The majority has overruled Abood for no exceptional or special reason, but because it never liked the decision. It has overruled Abood because it wanted to. Id. at **26-27.

The First Amendment in 1977 was the same as it is today, and yet, the Supreme Court again tramples on long-established American public policy favoring workplace peace and shared prosperity through collective bargaining between labor and management—one of few remaining mechanisms for workers to stand toe-to-toe with employers. The Court, despite its “pull-your-boots-up” philosophy, now gives “free-riders” the right to reap the fruits of hard-fought collective bargaining without chipping in anything.

Even conservative legal experts like Eugene Volokh agree that the majority’s opinion fails to reckon with the many ways in which “the First Amendment ‘simply do[es] not guarantee that one’s hard-earned dollars will never be spent on speech one disapproves of.’” Dissent at p. 15; Eugene Volokh, Why There’s No First Amendment Problem With Compulsory Union Agency Fees, (published Jan. 29, 2018), available at: https://reason.com/volokh/2018/01/19/why-theres-no-first-amendment-problem-wi. Were it otherwise, the Court would be compelled to upend many other well-entrenched arrangements where the government requires mandatory fees to subsidize various activities it believes serve an important governmental interest but which individuals may oppose, such as mandatory bar dues for attorneys, certain administrative fees for public university students, and, more generally, taxes spent on controversial governmental activities.

The Janus opinion is another example of the Roberts Court “turning the First Amendment into a sword, and using it against workaday economic and regulatory policy.” Slip. Op., Dissent at 27. Working people should remember this decision as they head to the ballot box this November.

Epic Fail: U.S. Supreme Court Rules that Employers May Require Employees to Waive Right to Bring a Class Action as a Condition of Employment

On Monday, the Roberts Court took another significant step in its ongoing project to hobble class actions and impose barriers to employees seeking redress against their employers by holding that class action waivers within arbitration agreements do not violate the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”). The employees, seeking to recover unpaid wages on behalf of themselves and other employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), had argued that the NLRA’s Section 7, which guarantees employees’ “right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively . . . , and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection,” prohibits employers from requiring that employees agree to individual, binding arbitration as a condition of continued employment.

The case, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, comes on the heels of series of Roberts Court cases expanding the ability of companies to impose individual arbitration on their employees and customers, thus preventing employees and consumers from filing lawsuits in open court or filing class actions anywhere. Bryan Schwartz Law has written extensively about the Court’s decisions expanding the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) at the expense of the rights of employees and consumers: here, here, here, here, here, and here. In 2001, the Rehnquist Court ruled in Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams that the FAA’s express exclusion of “the contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce,” meant to remove only the employment disputes of transportation workers from binding arbitration, notwithstanding the broad “any other class of workers” language in the Act. Then, in 2011, the Roberts Court approved of class action waivers in consumer arbitration contracts in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion.

The Court’s opinion in Epic Systems, while hardly a surprise given this Court’s expressed disregard for the rights of workers and consumers in its recent arbitration jurisprudence, is notable for the sheer level of its intellectual dishonesty. Justice Gorsuch, writing for the five-Justice majority, feigns confusion as to why the National Labor Relations Board did not address the apparent conflict between the NLRA (enacted 1935) and the FAA (enacted 1925) until 2012, when the obvious answer is that no one thought that the FAA had anything to do with employment disputes in the late 1930s when Congress passed both the NLRA and the FLSA, which permits employees to bring “collective actions” to recover unpaid wages.

Gorsuch counsels judicial restraint in admonishing the employees for asserting a conflict between the FAA and NLRA – “This Court is not free to substitute its preferred economic policies for those chosen by the people’s representatives” – but fails to mention that the current regime making compulsory, pre-dispute arbitration a ubiquitous requirement for employees and consumers is a recent, judicial invention. Given the low value of most individual employment and consumer claims, the right-wing innovation is tantamount to a get-out-of-jail-free card (or out-of-liability-free card, at least) for companies engaging in wage theft and other insidious business practices, undermining fair competition with companies that play by the rules.

Completely absent from Court’s opinion is any discussion or concern as to how forced individual arbitration undermines the substantive rights enshrined in laws like the FLSA and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting employment discrimination). The success of these Acts has depended greatly on the ability to bring group actions challenging policies and practices that injure large numbers of workers. For instance, the landmark 1971 discrimination case Griggs v. Duke Power Co. involved a class of African-American employees who successfully challenged high school diploma and IQ-testing requirements that were unrelated to their jobs, but had the effect of keeping African-Americans out of the most desirable positions. In Gorsuch’s world, these sorts of fundamental statutory protections must give way to the Roberts Court’s arbitration regime, under which its expansive reading of the FAA trumps all.

Justice Ginsburg penned a fiery and forceful dissent, joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, in which she blasts the majority opinion for trampling on the ability of employees to exercise their statutory rights. Ginsburg traces the history of the Court’s labor jurisprudence, noting that New Deal legislation like the NLRA and the FLSA arose from an understanding that individual employees lacked the bargaining power to demand fair working conditions, and that only through acting collectively could employees “match their employers’ clout in setting the terms and conditions of employment.” In that sense, the majority’s opinion, premised on the fanciful notion that most employees have any ability to negotiate when their employers demand they sign an arbitration agreement, reflects a return to the pre-New Deal Lochner era, when the Court routinely struck down worker protections as violating the supposed freedom to contract.

Ginsburg further notes that the result of Epic Systems “will be the underenforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well-being of vulnerable workers.” Low-wage employees, especially, may be reluctant to take on their employers alone for fear of retaliation, since the costs and risks of proceeding individually often dwarf the potential recoveries. Of course, this is not an accidental outgrowth of the Roberts Court’s arbitration jurisprudence, but its central design: to insulate companies from liability for harm to their employees and customers.

After Epic Systems, employees, consumers, and those who advocate on their behalf have an increasingly limited toolbox to confront corporate abuse on a class-wide basis, so long as employers can demand individual arbitration. At this point, the only comprehensive solution is likely a legislative one, highlighting the importance of who Americans elect to the next Congress. When most Americans know victims of corporate overreaching – a day we fear is coming soon – the tide will turn, and the Roberts Court will be seen in its true light, on the wrong side of history.