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Attorney says Supremes' ruling a victory for conservative teachers

The head of the Pacific Justice Institute is hailing a Supreme Court ruling he says will protect the free-speech rights of teachers who have moral or religious objections to their union's political agenda.



The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states can require public employee unions to get approval from non-members before using their dues for political lobbying. The justices unanimously reversed a Washington State Supreme Court decision that found the Washington Education Association (WEA) could use the mandatory dues of non-member workers for its liberal political activism.

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), filed an amicus brief in support of the state's "paycheck protection" law, which the WEA had repeatedly violated.

"In the past, union workers have had to opt-out of having their union dues going to support issues or politics or candidates that they don't agree with," he notes. "[T]his ruling ... validates the constitutionality of a new state law in Washington which requires union workers to opt-in to having their dues go into politics instead of having to opt-out."

Karen Milam, who authored the amicus brief for PJI, says the legal group could not agree more with the court's ruling in Davenport v. Washington Education Association. "For far too long, unions have bullied and coerced conscientious employees into funding agendas that are morally repugnant to their deeply-held religious beliefs," she states in a press release.

Unions had argued that restrictions in the paycheck protection law violated their free-speech rights. But writing for the high court, Justice Antonin Scalia said the law did not violate the WEA's First Amendment rights. "It is gratifying that the Supreme Court unanimously recognized and repudiated the unions' arguments," says Milam.

Dacus says the ruling is big blow to the defendant in the case, the Washington state affiliate of the National Education Association.

"The big losers [in] this decision are going to be the liberal, left-wing unions in the state of Washington, like the teachers' union, that have been so far successful in coercing union workers to pay union dues to [support] candidates they don't agree with," says the attorney. "Now they're not going to be able to do that, and those liberal candidates are going to find there's not the big pot of gold coming from the union."

Dacus calls the court's ruling "a watershed decision" that will inspire other states to adopt similar paycheck protection bills.