Freedom of Contract & Freedom of Speech and Association

Harris v. Quinn (2014)


  • May 24 2018

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Issue

Whether a union requiring a class of home health care workers—hired by the disabled person, but paid from state and federal funds—to pay union fees despite their abstaining from union membership violates their First Amendment rights of freedom of association, freedom of speech, and to petition the government for redress of grievances, as applied to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Facts

Illinois participates in a Medicaid-waiver program, which subsidizes the costs of providing home-based services to participants with severe disabilities. In short, participants in the program hire at-home care providers to avoid staying in hospitals or institutions. The participants supervise, discipline, and control certain terms and conditions of the providers they hire, while Illinois subsidizes some of the costs of care and controls some of the economic terms of the provider’s employment. These providers were divided into two classes: the Rehabilitation Providers and the Disability Providers.

For decades the Rehabilitation Providers had been considered non-state employees, until in 2003 Governor Blagojevich signed an executive order that ultimately reclassified the providers as state employees. In accordance with the new provision requirements, the at-home providers voted for the Service Employees International Union SEIU to be their sole union representative. Some providers were union members, others were not, but regardless, through subsequent collective bargaining agreements between the union and the state, all providers had to pay union fees. The reasoning was that all of the providers benefit from the collective bargaining.

Later in 2009, the new Governor Quinn of Illinois signed another executive order designating the Disability Providers as non-state employees, but they were still subject to some economic controls of the state. Soon after, the SEIU tried to become the exclusive representative of that subset of providers, but failed. The Disability Providers thus lacked union representation.

The Rehabilitation Plaintiffs sued the governor and unions, arguing that their compulsory union fees were being used to financially support the SEIU, which was participating in political lobbying on issues to which they were opposed—namely, collective bargaining with the state. They argued this violated their First and Fourteenth amendment rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, and to petition the government for redress of grievances. Further, they argued that the fees imposed were not justified by a “vital government interest.” Also, the Disability Plaintiffs argued that they had devoted time and money toward opposing the efforts of the SEIU to become their representative, and the ongoing efforts of the SEIU to become their representative threatened to violate their constitutional rights.

The Court Below

The U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Illinois was the first to hear the case. The court ruled against the non-union Rehabilitation Providers and in favor of the unions, holding that the fees were simply supporting collective bargaining agreements from which all the providers benefit, and none of the fees were used to support political activities. The court dismissed the claims of the Rehabilitation Plaintiffs for lack of standing and ripeness.

Harris v. Quinn, No. 10-cv-02477 N.D. Ill., 2010

The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the relevant part of the ruling in favor of the unions, holding that non-union state employees Rehabilitation Providers can be compelled to pay fair share fees to support legitimate, non-ideological, union activities. They similarly dismissed the claims of the Disability Plaintiffs. See opinion below:

Harris v. Quinn, 656 F.3d 692 7th Cir., 2011

Plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, which affirmed in part and reversed in part the lower court ruling. Non-union personal assistants such as the Rehabilitation Plaintiffs could not be compelled to pay union fees, and requiring such fees did not serve a sufficiently compelling state interest. See opinion below:

Harris v. Quinn, 134 S.Ct. 2618 2014

Question before the Court

  1. May a State, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, compel personal care providers to accept and financially support a private organization as their exclusive representative to petition the State for greater reimbursements from its Medicaid programs?
  2. Did the lower court err in holding that the claims of providers in the Home Based Support Services Program are not ripe for judicial review?

CCJ filed an amicus curiae with the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Atlantic Legal Foundation in support of Harris and the other petitioners.

Summary:

The First Amendment was intended to protect against compelled political support. There is no distinction between “bargaining” and “lobbying,” and neither the state nor unions can constitutionally force people to give money to organizations that support political or ideological causes with which they disagree. That is a violation of one’s liberty of conscience, a consistent principle held by some of the most prominent Founders. Further, there is no “compelling government interest” that justifies interference with First Amendment liberties. Prior judicial decisions that have allowed public employee unions to abridge dissenters’ First Amendment rights have significantly damaged effective government and should be reconsidered.

The First Amendment protects against compelled financial support of political causes and religious or political ideologies. Unions may “bargain” or otherwise exert pressure on the government to further certain policies with ideological roots, much like churches. During the Founding era there was significant debate over compelled financial support of churches in Massachusetts and Virginia. Thomas Jefferson wrote that “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” James Madison similarly argued against compulsory taxes that would have supported religious establishments in Virginia. Freedom from supporting political ideology is closely related to freedom from compulsory support of religious doctrine, both of which fall into the same category of liberty of conscience, as the Supreme Court has affirmed.

There is no “compelling” government interest that justifies the interference with fundamental First Amendment liberties of public employees. Indeed, often public-employee union negotiations actually harm the public that the government is designated to protect. Reducing working hours, for example, can detract from public services, and increased wages often come with great costs to the taxpayers. Further, despite the Court’s clear holdings that labor unions may not use dues or fees to support political campaigns, which would violate First Amendment liberties, unions have exerted “massive resistance” to such decisions, and the union activities themselves involve allocating government resources—clearly a political activity that the employees may or may not support.

These are not private unions with private companies that simply negotiate immediate wages and working hours. Public union negotiations can and do shift scarce government resources, often based on underlying ideologies and political objects, and those ideologies and objects may be contrary to those held by the employees. The public employee’s individual freedom to dissent and refuse cooperation with such organizations should be the guiding principle in this case. The Constitution protects the right of citizens to band together to participate in petitioning the government to allocate resources for public services, but it does not allow some people, under the protection of the government, to coerce others to finance their political activities.

Final Outcome

The Supreme Court agreed with much of CCJ’s argument. It held that the unions could not compel the providers to join the union because they were not full state employees—they were answerable to the participating patients for their employment, not the state. Further, the First Amendment prohibits the collection of fees that result in political lobbying, and even if the Court were to consider a balancing test between a “compelling” government interest and the petitioners’ fundamental First Amendment rights, that balance would fall in favor of the First Amendment.