"A 40-year-old precedent allows states to permit unions to collect a so-called agency fee from non-members to support collective bargaining activities, and California is one of about 20 states that allow it.
"Public employee unions say such fees are essential to their well-being, and that challenges to the arrangement are born of conservative efforts to weaken their strength. Liberal justices during an hour and a half of oral arguments said the challengers had not supplied the kind of evidence required for the court to overturn a precedent.
"But the court's conservative majority in 2012 and 2014 expressed grave doubts about the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, and there seemed little reason after the oral arguments for unions to think the majority was not ready to now finish it off."
The Funding Behind This Case
Politico looked at the funding behind the organization involved in this case, in "Conservative group nears big payoff in Supreme Court case":
"The conservative Bradley Foundation has spent millions over three decades to smash labor unions. ...
"The Bradley Foundation funds the Center for Individual Rights, the conservative D.C. nonprofit law firm that brought the case; it funds (or has funded) at least 11 organizations that submitted amicus briefs for the plaintiffs; and it's funded a score of conservative organizations that support the lawsuit's claim that the 'fair-share fees' nonmembers must pay are unconstitutional. When CIR first filed the case in a California federal court in 2013, the Bradley Foundation posted the news on its website under the tab, 'What We Do.'
"Bradley isn't the sole conservative philanthropy to bankroll CIR. Others have included Donors Capital Fund and Donor's Trust, two vehicles frequently used by the Koch brothers; the Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking; the F.M. Kirby Foundation; the Lillian Wells Foundation; and the Carthage Foundation, according to Conservative Transparency, a project of the liberal opposition research nonprofit American Bridge.
"Groups submitting amicus briefs in Friedrichs that received funds from Bradley include the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Institute for Justice, the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Other conservative groups backing the Friedrichs case have also gained Bradley support, including the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation; the Goldwater Institute; the National Federation of Independent Businesses; the Freedom Foundation; the Atlantic Legal Foundation; and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, according to Conservative Transparency data."
The New York Times also looked at the backers, in Supreme Court Case on Public Sector Union Fees Rouses Political Suspicions:
"It has been nearly 18 years since Hillary Clinton used the term 'vast right-wing conspiracy' to describe the conservative forces arrayed against her husband's administration. But the suspicion about right-wing plotting remains as current on the left as, well, Mrs. Clinton.
"The center is backed financially by a number of prominent conservative foundations, and the case has generated considerable interest on the right. Conservative organizations and politicians, some of whom have received funding from Koch Industries and Charles and David Koch, have submitted more than one dozen amicus briefs in support of the plaintiffs.
"[. . .] The Center for Individual Rights is embedded in the world of prominent conservative political donors as well, having received large contributions from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service."
The Center for Media and Democracy has also looked at the funding behind anti-union organizations and an earlier court case that led to this one, and other well-known names pop up in their research: the Walton and Coors families. From "Who Is Behind the National Right to Work Committee and its Anti-Union Crusade?":
"As the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 session comes to a close, one of the major cases left for a decision is Harris vs. Quinn, which could affect millions of public sector workers in the United States.
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