A trio of Washington state senators – Pam Roach (Auburn), Don Benton (Vancouver) and Mark Miloscia (Federal Way) – have thrown their support behind the corrupting and abusive power of government unions, instead of the Constitutional rights of Washington’s workers.
Specifically, the lawmakers – all Republicans – did so last month by signing on to an amicus brief supporting the defendants in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, one of the most important cases before the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years.
Rebecca Friedrichs, a California school teacher, has no desire to participate in or support a teachers’ union in any way, but she still believes she has a right to teach in the state’s public school system. If she prevails, public employees across the country would be able to keep their jobs even if they opt out of their unions and pay no fees at all.
Since 1977, state employees have been able to opt out of paying full union dues because their First Amendment rights are violated when that money is used to fund political candidates and causes the worker doesn’t support. But unless the state has a right-to-work law on its books, the workers can still be charged a representation fee to reimburse the union for the costs associated with collective bargaining on the worker’s behalf.
But that reasoning – which Sens. Roach, Benton and Miloscia apparently embrace – ignores the fact that all collective bargaining for public employees is inherently political.
Every alteration of public employee wages, benefits, and working conditions directly impacts the public treasury and the size and efficiency of government. Sometimes there are good reasons to make those alterations, sometimes not. But every negotiation on those matters is absolutely political.
And nothing is more basic in our constitutional order than the fact that the First Amendment protects every individual from being forced to subsidize another’s political speech.
Friedrichs is about restoring the rights of free speech and association to our public servants and freeing them from the obligation to financially support private union interests.
Weeks ago, the Washington Federation of State Employees began reaching out to Republican legislators across the country, encouraging them to sign a Supreme Court brief they prepared to oppose Ms. Friedrichs in hopes of generating a “bipartisan” expression of opposition.
They argued that the First Amendment rights of public employees are less important than states’ rights to order public employment as state governments see fit. It’s a shameful act of political theater, but a performance with a long history. These same arguments were levied by “states’ rights” advocates who opposed school desegregation in the 1950s.
The rights to freely speak and associate are fundamental, and government may only diminish those rights when armed with an exceedingly strong justification.
Maintaining the government-union racket is not such a justification.
WFSE’s amicus brief is a thinly veiled attempt to protect their monopoly at the expense of constitutional rights, and Sens. Roach, Benton, and Miloscia should know better.
David Dewhirst is Litigation Counsel and James Abernathy is General Counsel for the Freedom Foundation, an Olympia-based think and action tank promoting free markets and limited, accountable government.
