

Public-sector labor unions can’t force nonmembers to pay fees, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, in a decision that could cripple unions’ abilities to spend money on political activities that usually benefit Democrats.

The ruling against labor marked a major victory for anti-union groups and conservative donors who bankrolled Janus’s litigation in the hopes of stifling union influence.

Legal observers had long expected the Supreme Court to side with Mark Janus, an Illinois state government employee who filed a suit claiming the local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union’s mandatory fair share fees violated his free speech rights. Janus, who is not a union member, argued the mandatory fees are unconstitutional because they are used to lobby and contribute to political causes he does not support.

Fair share fees were already banned in 28 “right-to-work” states. But in states without right-to-work laws, unions could impose fees on all workers who benefit from employee contract negotiations, even if workers weren’t members. The ruling outlaws those fees nationwide and could deprive public-sector unions of nonmember income.

“The intention of the right-wing funders of the legal effort is most certainly to reduce union political activity,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who has worked with labor unions. Unions’ direct political expenditures are likely to drop in the short-run because of the ruling, he said.

That would primarily hurt Democratic candidates, who receive the bulk of labor union contributions.

Total labor sector contributions have consistently topped $135 million in each election since 2012, according to an OpenSecrets analysis. Spending peaked in 2016, when labor poured nearly $217 million into elections nationwide. Most of that money went to Democrats, and the AFSCME itself has historically backed Democratic candidates.

In the 2016 races, almost all of AFSCME’s more than $1.7 million in candidate contributions went to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. The breakdown is similar in the 2018 election cycle — more than 99 percent of its $1.1 million in candidate contributions so far have gone to Democrats.

The AFSCME also contributes millions of dollars to liberal outside spending groups.

The union has given roughly $3.6 million to outside spending groups in the 2018 election cycle alone. More than 70 percent of that spending has gone to a super PAC called For Our Future, which was formed by labor unions to support Democratic candidates. Sky Gallegos, who is listed as For Our Future’s treasurer, is the Democratic National Convention Committee’s deputy CEO for intergovernmental affairs.

The union gave just over $11 million to outside spending groups in 2016, and about half those contributions went to For Our Future.

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The AFSCME has lobbied Congress on right-to-work policies, according to lobbying disclosures. The union’s lobbying efforts overall have totaled than $2.3 million annually since 2009, peaking at $2.9 million in spending in 2011.

Who backed Janus?

Because most labor money is steered toward Democrats, it should be no surprise conservative donors and anti-labor interest groups backed Janus in a courtroom battle that could cripple union lobbying and campaign spending efforts.

Tom McCabe, CEO of the Freedom Foundation, an anti-union think and action tank with reported connections to conservative donors that include the Koch brothers, has said a ruling in Janus’s favor could have “huge” consequences for unions’ political contributions.

“Imagine tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars currently used to push damaging left-wing causes and candidates … vanishing,” McCabe said in a Freedom Foundation mailer, which was obtained and published by the Guardian in May.

The Freedom Foundation wasn’t the only group involved in the case. The Liberty Justice Center, one of the parties that represented Janus in court, received $800,000 in recent years from a policy institute funded by Richard Uihlein, an anti-union megadonor, according to tax forms reviewed by OpenSecrets. Uihlein is an Illinois businessman who has spent millions of dollars supporting Republican candidates such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner and former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, the New York Times reported in February.

Uihlein has also given more than $1 million to groups like the Federalist Society, which works to appoint conservatives to federal court positions, according to the New York Times. And he’s a major donor to the Illinois Policy Institute, a research organization that helped get Janus’s case off the ground and is closely connected to the Liberty Justice Center, the newspaper reported.

Though the Supreme Court ruling for Janus could curb union political activity in the short-run, Hauser said the possible long-term effects are unclear. Conservative donors’ efforts to weaken unions might even backfire and inspire labor members to become more active, he said.

“This could definitely be a situation in which there ends up being a little bit of an irony,” Hauser said, adding that public employee activism outside the context of a stronger union might grow rather than fade.

Teachers in right-to-work states like West Virginia and Arizona have still mounted successful campaigns to raise wages despite those states’ relatively weaker unions and voters’ general anti-labor sentiments, he said. Public opinion in those states has tended to side with the protesting teachers, he added.

“The public employee unrest across the country I think suggests (union opponents) really might be awakening a part of civil society that they don’t really want to awaken,” Hauser said.



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