Issue Preclusion

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Mark Janus, et al v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, et al

Case No.: 16-3638

Officials: POSNER, SYKES, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Issue Preclusion

In Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), the Supreme Court upheld, against a challenge based on the First Amendment, a Michigan law that allowed a public employer (in that case a municipal board of education), whose employees (public-school teachers) were represented by a union, to require those of its employees who did not join the union nevertheless to pay fees to it because they benefited from the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the employer. The fees could only be great enough to cover the cost of the union’s activities that benefited them; they could not be expanded to enable the union to use a portion of them “for the expression of political views, on behalf of political candidates, or toward the advancement of other ideological causes not germane to [the union’s] duties as collective-bargaining representative.” 431 U.S. at 235–36. For were that permitted, the workers who disagreed with the political views embraced by the union would be unwilling contributors to expenditures for promoting political views anathema to them, and the law requiring those contributions would thereby have infringed their constitutional right of free speech.

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.