Commentary: While the upcoming 2016 legislative session and presidential primaries dominate the news cycle in New Mexico, an upcoming US Supreme Court case is making individual liberty a not-so-distant reality for millions of Americans.
The battle at hand—Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association—is over labor law, and it grapples with a simple question: Can unions override the First Amendment and force employees who disagree with their agenda to support them financially?
A victory by the plaintiffs, led by California schoolteacher Rebecca Friedrichs, would affirm workplace freedom in the public sector by allowing employees to choose whether they support a union or not with their hard-earned money. It would bring right-to-work to government employees in the roughly half of states in the union where a union can currently get a worker fired for nonpayment.
While right-to-work has become an important issue here in New Mexico, teachers are one large group of public employees in the Land of Enchantment that cannot be required to pay union dues.
That is not the case in California where Rebecca Friedrichs left her teachers union, the California Teachers Association (CTA), only to find that she was still legally obligated to pay union dues. The CTA and other unions refer to this mandatory payment as a “fair-share fee,” whereby employees are ensnared into financing the union whether they are members or not.
In California, for instance, unionized teachers still pay about $700 per year to the CTA, which goes to support policies like teacher tenure and the preservation of overly-generous pensions—policies that Friedrichs does not support. And she is not isolated in her views: Roughly 29,000 teachers pay fair-share fees to the CTA, despite the fact that they turned down union representation.
Yet the First Amendment is clear: “[Abridging] the freedom of speech” is unconstitutional. This includes forcing someone to fund political views they disagree with.
The Friedrichs case makes the point that all actions by government unions are inherently political. If the union negotiates for higher salaries or benefits for its public employee members, then that money cannot be spent on other services such as mass transit or parks.
Reinforcing free speech is neither pro- nor anti-union. Workplace freedom doesn’t pick a side; it just guarantees that all employees are guaranteed the voice they currently lack. As Friedrichs argues, “I am not anti-union at all, I came from a union family. I am against forced unions.”
It’s a key distinction that could benefit public employees in about half the states in the nation where they have no choice but to fund speech they may not support.
Shouldn’t all Americans have that option?
Individual liberty is a hot topic in today’s political climate. One teacher’s fight for hers could finally make it attainable for the masses.
Paul Gessing is the President of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility