In March, at the urging of the National Right to Work Foundation, the U.S. Supreme Court took up Ysursa v. Pocatello Education Association. Now the Foundation has jointly filed an amicus curiae brief (pdf) in the case.
The High Court is reviewing a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that says that Idaho's state law banning payroll deductions for union political expenditures (narrowly defined) can not apply to payroll deductions at the local government level.
As the Foundation's brief explains, the Ninth Circuit's ruling wrongly forces Idaho taxpayers to subsidize union political activities by offering valuable payroll deduction services to union officials.
When the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would take the case, Foundation vice president Stefan Gleason noted "like state governments, local governments should not act as bagmen for union political funds."
And even more alarmingly should the Supreme Cout fail to overturn the Ninth Circuit's ruling, it will open the door for union lawyers to misuse the court's reasoning to launch fresh new attacks on state Right to Work laws as applied to local government bodies.
The Foundation's joined with the Utah Taxpayers Association, the Sutherland Institute, and the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Center in filing the brief.
Comments
Why file an amicus brief in
Why file an amicus brief in support of a law you called "bad policy and bad politics" when it was struck down by the Ninth Circuit?
http://www.nrtw.org/blog/paycheck-protection-regulation-nixed
Idaho mop up operation
I know this is complicated, but this law is actually a bit different than the misguided and ineffective campaign finance regulations proposed in years past that got into erecting opt-in, opt-out payroll deduction rules and government oversight structures. (In Washington, a state group that supported such a law there actually filed an amicus brief confessing that the regulation covered a "miniscule" amount of funds -- "less than 1/4 of 1 percent of the [teacher union's] expenditures." If that's progress, I'd hate to see failure!)
In contrast, the Idaho law was actually a flat-out prohibition on the use of payroll deduction privileges to withhold funds to be spent for certain, narrowly defined union political activities. Of course, it would have been MUCH better, cleaner, and enforceable to simply eliminate payroll deduction privileges for ANY dues spent for ANY purpose.
Since it must marshal its resources wisely, National Right to Work did not and would not affirmatively push for the extremely limited Idaho law. But as was the case with a different law enacted years ago in Washington, union legal challenges in Idaho opened the door for major damage to the cause of employee freedom. At this point, the Ninth Circuit ruling needs to be overturned, in part, because the rationale could be used by union attorneys to attack the enforceability of state Right to Work laws as applied to local municipalities. In that sense, this is an unwelcome mop-up operation just like the U.S. Supreme Court case that came out of Washington State.
But also, defending this statute is important to help preserve the ability of states to go the much smarter and more productive step of eliminating union payroll deduction privileges altogether. In fact, if Idaho's legislature had amended its collective bargaining laws to do this, rather than go the route that it did, the law would have had a much more meaningful impact, AND it probably wouldn't have been struck down as applied to local municipalities either.