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The Mackinac Center and the Landmark Legal Foundation have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold its 2018 ruling that extended right-to-work and other protections to public employees. The Sept. 29 brief asks the high court to overturn a state court ruling that challenges a key part of Janus v. AFSCME.
The Supreme Court decided in Janus that public sector workers cannot be forced to support a union’s political speech as a condition of keeping their jobs. This decision protected millions of workers’ First Amendment rights. But the Mackinac Center recognized that the Janus ruling could do even more.
Shortly after the court ruled, the Mackinac Center launched Workers for Opportunity, an initiative to advance the worker freedoms outlined in the case. In the years since, WFO has educated workers and lawmakers across the nation on what Janus requires. For one thing, public sector workers should only be considered to have waived their First Amendment right not to join a union if they do so with knowing, informed and regular consent.
Alaska was the first state to embrace this understanding. In August 2019, the Alaska attorney general adopted WFO’s ideas, issuing a legal opinion that said the state’s dues deduction system failed to offer the protections required by Janus. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued an administrative order a few weeks later. The order required the state to create a new process for deducting dues that would protect the constitutional rights of state employees.
The Alaska State Employees Association sued to stop the reforms from going forward. The case advanced through the court system, and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that neither Janus nor the First Amendment required Alaska to change its system for making payroll deductions.
The governor was not willing to let that ruling stand without a fight. Neither was the Mackinac Center. Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor and the Mackinac Center both submitted briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, highlighting the need for clarity on the Janus decision. We hope the court will agree to hear the case and hold that workers can only waive their rights when they know what those rights are. If the court agrees, it will protect more than a million workers from being forced into supporting a union simply because they don’t know about their own rights. That outcome would be a win for workers everywhere.
