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Supreme Court Rules States May Restrict Unions' Use of Dues for Politics, Upholds Paycheck Protection for Workers

(Washington, DC) -- The future of campaign finance in America changed today as the United States Supreme Court ruled that states may enact "paycheck protection" laws requiring unions to obtain the persmission of members before using dues for politics.

The ruling is expected to provide a major boost to efforts to protect workers from being forced to fund candidates they do not support simply by being a member of a labor union.
Several states have passed paycheck protection laws in recent years, including Washington, Michigan, Idaho and Utah. In each case the laws came under relentless legal assault by unions desperate to protect their power to force members to fund their political agenda, regardless of the member's personal views.

The SCOTUS blog put it this way:

The Court held today in Davenport that because a public-employee union possesses nonmember feepayers' funds only because of special state- conferred privileges, the state can place a content- based condition on the union's use of those funds -- namely, that the union obtain the feepayers' consent before using the funds for election-related activity.

Union officials spent more than $100 million to narrowly defeat two paycheck protection measures in California in 1998 and 2005. The later measure was supported by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Questioning the constitionality of paycheck protection laws has been a centerpiece of union campaigns against the reform. The Supreme Court's ruling today clears away such objections.

The court found that because unions possess the funds due to a state mandate, the state also had the power to impose restrictions on the use of those funds. While the Davenport case specifically concerned the use of fees paid by non-members of the union, the rationale applies equally to union members

Central to success in the Davenport case was the work of the Washington-state based Evergreen Freedom Foundation. To learn more, visit their website at http://www.teachers-vs-union.org/ .

Download the decision (PDF)
Learn more about the case