A group of public schoolteachers on Monday petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to laws allowing teachers unions to require dues from nonmembers who disagree with union positions and policies.

A decision in the teachers' favor could change how public employee unions operate nationwide.

The lawsuit, first filed in April 2013, takes aim at the 300,000-member California Teachers Association and the affiliated National Education Association. The plaintiffs – 10 California teachers and the Christian Educators Association International – claim California's "agency shop" law is unconstitutional and violates teachers' First Amendment rights by forcing them to pay union dues regardless of whether they support or are a member of the union. Twenty-six states currently have such laws in place.

Rebecca Friedrichs, the case's lead plaintiff, says she decided to take legal action because she felt she had no other options and was "very seriously considering" leaving teaching. A teacher for more than 25 years, Friedrichs says she has opted out of paying a politically directed portion of union dues for most of her career. She became a full member for several years to try to affect change from the inside while serving as a union representative.

"They didn't want to hear what I had to say," Friedrichs says. "It just came to the point where I felt totally helpless and hopeless."

In California, teachers can opt out of paying the roughly 30 to 40 percent of dues devoted to political lobbying, but they can't opt out of dues used for collective bargaining issues. In total, California teachers pay as much as $1,000 annually in union dues, the plaintiffs say. They also argue it's particularly difficult to opt out of paying the politically directed dues because they must first pay the dues and then apply for a refund each year. Many teachers, they say, contribute hundreds of dollars to political activities they disagree with because the opt-out process is too complex.

The court has signaled that it would be open to hearing such a case. In June, it refused to extend the precedent set by a 1977 case on forced union dues to eight part-time home health care workers in Illinois. In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said the court's prior analysis in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education was "questionable on several grounds."

The precedent set in that case allows unions to require nonmembers to pay fees for collective bargaining, as long as the dues are not used for ideological or political purposes. But collective bargaining issues, Alito wrote, are inherently political in the public sector.

"In the private sector, the line is easier to see. Collective bargaining concerns the union’s dealings with the employer; political advocacy and lobbying are directed at the government," Alito wrote. "But in the public sector, both collective bargaining and political advocacy and lobbying are directed at the government."

The teachers are hoping that same argument will overturn the Abood ruling.

"We set it up to fit in the parameters the court itself suggested it would be looking for," says Terry Pell, president of the Center for Individual Rights, which is representing the 10 California teachers. "If we win, those teachers that disagree with the policies of their union – on really fundamental issues on things like tenure, merit pay and school choice – will be able to decide for themselves whether they want to financially support their union."

The plaintiffs' intent, Pell says, isn't to take down unions or attack collective bargaining, but rather to protect the First Amendment rights of teachers.

"The issues here are inherently political issues, and the First Amendment protects the right of individuals to decide for themselves what side of those political questions they’re on," Pell says. "We think the court should give heightened scrutiny to these types of political disputes."





Teachers unions, on the other hand, have said collecting dues is an issue of fairness to prevent "free-riding." Following the Supreme Court's June ruling for Illinois workers, union leaders said they would work harder to protect agency fees. The National Education Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"The First Amendment protects employees’ rights to publicly or privately express their views and to associate with each other for such purposes, but it does not compel their public employer to recognize or deal with them, nor does it bar the employer from choosing to recognize or deal with others instead," the California Teachers Association wrote in a previous brief in opposition to the case.

It is constitutional, the association continued, for the state to say that "employees who do not choose to become union members, but who share in 'benefits of union representation that necessarily accrue to all employees,' … do not have a right to receive the benefits of representation for free, but may be required to pay their pro rata share of the expenses thus incurred by their representative."

But in a 2012 Supreme Court opinion, the justices ruled that unions' anti-free-riding argument would be "generally insufficient to overcome First Amendment objections."

"It certainly has to make public sector unions and their advocates pretty nervous," says Michael Brickman, national policy director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. "What we've seen in other states is when given a choice, many workers don't feel the dues are worth what they get in return."

After Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, signed legislation in 2011 that limited collective bargaining, prohibited employers from collecting union dues and banned unions from automatically withholding dues from member paychecks, two major teachers unions in the state lost thousands of their members. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported the Wisconsin Education Association Council, a National Education Association affiliate, had lost about one-third of its 98,000 members, and membership in the American Federation of Teachers' Wisconsin affiliate decreased by 60 percent from its peak of 16,000 members.

Michigan and Indiana have passed similar laws limiting fee collection by public labor unions.

Ideally, Friedrichs says, she'd like to see a system in which nonmembers would not be forced to pay dues.





"I don't have a problem with unions," she says. "I understand a lot of people want to have that collective voice. That would be ideal where you have a choice; [you're] not coerced, but you're also not bullied or called a freeloader or some other name-calling because you choose not to pay for that."

In decades past, particularly after the Great Depression, Friedrichs says the idea of labor unions made more sense. But with the increased political nature of policy discussions, unions have "morphed into something very different now."

"They're more a political activist," Friedrichs says. "They've done more harm than good."

Friedrichs takes particular issue with some common union priorities in California, such as a continued insistence on higher wages, even in times of economic hardship, and more generous pension packages. Public schoolteachers in California on average earned $69,324 in 2012-13, according to the California Department of Education.

The California Teachers Association is arguably the most influential political organization in the state, Pell says. It spent millions bankrolling the re-election campaign of Tom Torlakson, the state's superintendent of public instruction, against challenger Marshall Tuck, a charter school administrator who was backed by education reformers. In the end, the race was the most expensive in the state, totaling more than $30 million in funds raised from both sides.

Unions at the national and local levels have also been vocally opposed to lawsuits in several states – including California and New York – challenging the structure of teacher tenure laws, saying they attack teachers' due process protections.

Overall, Friedrichs says she finds it ironic that as a nonmember, she has no vote in the collective bargaining process but still has to pay several hundred dollars each year for that purpose. Teachers unions, she and Pell say, have become what they were designed to fight.