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The Supreme Court will hear a single argument on Monday, instead of the usual two. It will last 80 minutes, instead of the usual 60. And it will feature four lawyers: one for 10 California teachers who say they have a First Amendment right not to pay fees to a union; one for the union, which says it must be able to insist that nonmembers pay for their fair share of the costs of collective bargaining; and ones for California and federal government, which say the union is right.

The isolated, oversize and overstuffed argument signals that the case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, is a big deal.

Indeed, when the Supreme Court last considered the central issue in it, in 2014, Justice Elena Kagan sketched out the stakes. “It is a radical argument,” she said of the idea that workers have a First Amendment right not to pay for collective bargaining.

“It would radically restructure the way workplaces across” the United States “are run.”

That case ended in a modest 5-to-4 decision divided along the usual ideological lines. At the argument, though, Justice Antonin Scalia asked a series of questions sympathetic to public unions. If the California teachers unions are to prevail in the new case, they will very likely need his vote.