We didn’t learn anything from this morning’s argument in Janus v. AFSCME, which asks whether state laws that compel the payment of “agency fees” by nonmembers of public‐sector unions violate the First Amendment by forcing those workers to support policy positions they don’t like. None of the eight justices who heard the Friedrichs case on the same issue two years ago—which ended up 4–4 after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death—appeared to have changed their minds. The ninth, Justice Neil Gorsuch, didn’t ask a single question or otherwise show his hand. The whole exercise seemed like redundant pointlessness.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opened the questioning by asking about the validity of student activity fees and bar dues if Illinois state employee Mark Janus were to prevail, as well as how such a ruling would affect private‐sector unions. Janus’s lawyer, Bill Messenger, responded that different state interests were at play there and that there’s no state action in the private sector and so no First Amendment harm. (Justice Scalia, in a 25‐year‐old case called Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Association, made the same point, which is why he was considered the swing vote in Friedrichs—though he showed himself to unambiguously be on Rebecca Friedrichs’s side during oral argument in that case.)
Justice Elena Kagan expressed concern about the practical impact of a ruling that struck down the laws of 22 states that allow agency fees, which would also affect thousands of collectively bargained contracts. As expected, much of the questioning focused on stare decisis—the weight of a 40‐year‐old precedent that needs to be overturned for Janus to win—an issue that Cato’s amicus brief focused on.
Messenger explained that the law works fine in the other states, the contracts would all expire in the next few years at most, and that in any event, maintaining an unconstitutional contract can’t be a valid reliance interest. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, siding with Janus, added that the contracts were negotiated “in the shadow of” two recent opinions, Knox v. SEIU and Harris v. Quinn, that threw serious doubt on Abood’s continuing validity.
On the other side, Justice Anthony Kennedy showed palpable disgust at the idea that the government would force people to pay for advocacy with which they disagreed, particularly given the reality that unions uniformly advocated for larger workforces, higher taxes, and generally bigger government. Frankly, the only time I’ve seen him as exercised was when he orally summarized the joint dissent in NFIB v. Sebelius, the 2012 Obamacare case.
Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Knox and Harris decisions, pointed out that the Constitution also doesn’t require that unions represent non-members—that it was state laws that made unions workers’ exclusive representative. He also took umbrage at the argument that public‐sector workers don’t have First Amendment rights.
Justice Stephen Breyer floated a sort of compromise by offering that the agency fees should really only go to union expenses on negotiating wages and hours and on grievance procedures. In other words, that old precedent, Abood v. Detroit v. Board of Education, would be tightened rather than overturned.
It’s unclear whether Chief Justice John Roberts, whose minimalism often tilts toward narrow rulings, would make that deal. He poo‐pooed the harm to unions from a ruling in Janus’s favor—they would just need to become more efficient and effective to attract members, he said—and repeatedly expressed concern that even bargaining over wages affects state budgets and thus has public‐policy salience.
The smart money remains that Gorsuch will vote with Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas (who also remained silent), and Alito in supporting Janus’s lawsuit. Of course, as one observer mentioned to me, Roberts was silent (update: nearly) in King v. Burwell, the 2015 Obamacare case, and we all know how that ended up. We’ll know in June.
This post is edited down from an op‐ed published in the Washington Examiner.
