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Union Supreme Court Case Could Have WIDE RANGING Consequences

1,705 views · Published 2 March 2018 · 16:37 · Indexed 23 September 2026

Channel: The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder · 2018 · News & Politics

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In this Majority Report clip, Sam Seder and Professor Ann C. Hodges discuss the Supreme Court's response to the Janus v. AFSCME case.

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Read more here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/justice-neil-gorsuch-is-about-to-deliver-republicans-a-big-return-on-their-investment.html

"On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME, a challenge to the idea that public-sector unions can collect fees from nonmembers in 22 states. The court may as well skip the charade of arguments altogether. There is simply no question how the justices will rule in Janus: After Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, they divided 4–4 on this exact question. Since then, Republicans installed Justice Neil Gorsuch on the court, and no one seriously doubts that he will come through for the party that kept his seat open for a year.

What’s interesting about Janus, then, is not its inevitable outcome, but the role that it will play in furthering the Republican agenda. Public-sector unions have long helped Democrats win elections and implement progressive policy, counteracting the influence of conservative corporate electioneering. Legislative assaults on unions helped weaken the Democratic Party. The judicial blow could cripple it.

Janus marks the logical endpoint of a laughably spurious constitutional theory. In 1977’s Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the Supreme Court upheld agency fees in public-sector employment. Unions collect these “fair share” fees from nonmembers to support collective bargaining and cannot use them to subsidize political activities. The Abood court held that it is perfectly constitutional for public-sector unions to compel nonmembers to pay these fees: Because they benefit from the contracts that are achieved through collective bargaining, the court reasoned, they can be forced to help cover the costs of those negotiations."

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