The U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed an appeal by Alaska aimed at reinstating its government union dues deduction system that the state argued was designed to safeguard state employees’ constitutionally protected free speech rights.
The system required that unionized employees register with their union each year to give consent for the deduction of union dues and fees.
The court denied the petition for review in Alaska v. Alaska State Employees Association (ASEA), in an unsigned order on Jan. 16. No justices dissented. The court did not explain its decision. At least four of the nine justices must vote to grant a petition for a case to move forward to the oral argument stage.
The decision comes after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2018 ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Council 31.
Janus held that states cannot compel public employees to support, through their paychecks, union speech with which they disagree.
Labor unions oppose Alaska’s system, saying it goes beyond what the Janus decision mandates, and is part of an anti-union push by Republican state officials.
Alaska’s Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy previously said that the government was looking out for the interests of its employees.
“Before we take any money from the paychecks of state employees, we need to ensure that the employees were properly advised of their rights and consented to the deduction,” he said.
“And if employees disagree with union speech, they need to be given an opportunity to opt out. Our payroll system does not adequately protect the constitutional rights of our employees and changes must be made.”
Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, also a Republican, added: “The promise of Janus is unfulfilled.
Waiving First Amendment Rights
According to the petition filed by the state in August 2023, in Janus, the U.S. Supreme Court “gave clear directions to any state that takes money from employees’ paychecks to subsidize union speech.”Because unions take positions during the collective bargaining process that carry with them powerful political and civic consequences, “states cannot force public employees to subsidize union speech.”
“Nor can states assume that employees have consented to do so. Instead, states need ‘clear and compelling evidence’ that employees have waived their First Amendment rights before deducting ‘an agency fee or any other payment,’” the petition stated.
But many states are defying these instructions.
“Instead of demanding clear and compelling evidence of an employee’s consent, they blindly defer to unions, deducting dues whenever the union produces the smallest evidence of consent,” according to the document.
This has led to “predictable” results.
“States deduct dues even when unions never notify employees of their First Amendment rights. States allow unions (rather than the employees) to deliver dues-deduction forms, thus depriving them of proof that the employees’ signatures are genuine and that their choice was voluntary.”
“And states continue deducting dues even when employees protest that their money was improperly used to subsidize union speech—because the employees were coerced, they never consented, or their signatures were forged.”
Unions Fight Back
Although the law provided that the state must deduct union dues whenever a union provided the employee’s “written authorization,” the labor unions could still “impose harsh terms preventing employees from ending their subsidization of union speech.”To deal with this problem, state officials said they would no longer take out dues based solely on receipt of a dues-deduction form created by unions. Instead, the state would design its own form that would remind employees of their First Amendment rights and allow them to opt out of the deduction process.
The state Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling in favor of the union, agreeing with the court’s finding that “the State breached the collective bargaining agreement and violated relevant statutes.”
“Neither Janus nor the First Amendment required the State to alter the union member dues deduction practices set out in the collective bargaining agreement” in place between the government and the union, it said.
The Alaska Supreme Court also said that the state’s changes to the labor relations framework showed an “anti-union animus.”
The state was wrong to interfere with the operations of the union “when it unilaterally told ASEA members they could stop deducting dues, and actually ceased collecting dues from some members, in violation of the members’ dues authorization agreements with ASEA and the State’s collective bargaining agreement with ASEA.”
But in the view of the state, Alaska, like many other states, is continuing to flout the Janus ruling and is forcing employees to subsidize “union speech without sufficient evidence of employee consent,” the petition stated.
Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, states and unions “will never change.”
“The Court should vindicate the promise of Janus: that employees cannot be compelled to subsidize union speech,” it says.
