Washington state union case heads to the Supreme Court
First Amendment rights are threatened in the state of Washington, the U.S. Supreme Court has been told, but it will be up to the justices to decide who needs protection. The Court has heard oral argument in a pair of consolidated cases, Davenport v. Washington Education Association, Docket No. 05-1589, and Washington v. Washington Education Association, Docket No. 05-1657, involving a Washington state law requiring unions to get affirmative authorization from nonmembers to use workers' money for political causes. The case landed before the Court after the Washington Supreme Court struck down the law, saying the union's offer to reduce fees for any nonmember who registers an objection to the political spending was sufficient. The Washington Education Association (WEA), the state's largest teachers union, argued its freedoms would be endangered by the law. On the other side are the state and workers who do not join the union but who under state law must pay dues anyway and argue their money should not be used for the union's election causes without their explicit approval. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was sympathetic to the state’s argument, saying it appeared to him that Washington had acted properly to protect the rights of nonmembers. He told union attorney John West: "You want us to consider the case as if the First Amendment rights of nonunion members were not involved." Mr. West said that was not true, and that the Supreme Court in the past had found that those workers were properly protected by giving them the right to opt out of having their dues spent for political purposes. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Washington Attorney General Robert McKenna (R), who was defending the state law, seemed to agree that nonmembers have already made a statement about the union's political activities when they decided not to join. In practice, only 5% of eligible employees in Washington decline to join WEA; 75% of dues funds go to collective bargaining, and funds spent on political purposes is used to support or oppose ballot issues rather than being used for candidate campaigns.
Washington Post
By Robert Barnes
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: Background on the cases and the transcript of the arguments are below.]
[NSBA School Law pages on Wash. v. Wash. Educ. Ass’n & Davenport v. Wash. Educ. Ass’n]
[Supreme Court transcript in Wash. v. Wash. Educ. Ass’n & Davenport v. Wash. Educ. Ass’n]