The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Monday in Janus. Analyses report that, as expected, there were pointed questions for AFSCME and Illinois by Justices Alito and Kennedy; the four liberal justices took every opportunity to highlight the potential effect... More »
The Supreme Court has posted the transcript of this morning’s oral argument in Janus. Notably, Justice Gorsuch, expected to be the deciding vote, did not speak during the argument. We’ll have more coverage of the oral argument later this week. More »
Janus v. AFSCME will soon decide the constitutional fate of fair-share fees for public sector unions. These fees support unions’ collective bargaining work on behalf of employees they are legally required to represent but who are not union members. Most progno... More »
Most of the coverage of Janus v. AFSCME, like this recent piece in USA Today, simply (and perhaps correctly) assumes that the five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court will use the case to overturn Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the 1977 case uphol... More »
A group of over two dozen economists and law and economics professors filed an amicus in Janus in support of the respondents. The brief argues that “decades if not centuries of economic theory and empirical evidence” establish that many who pay ag... More »
Several leading professors of labor and employment law have filed an amicus brief in support of the respondents in Janus. The brief, authored by Samuel Estreicher, was filed by Cynthia Estlund, Estreicher, Julius Getman, William Gould, Michael Harper, and The... More »
An amicus filed on Friday in Janus and based on Ben’s new article Agency Fees and the First Amendment, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 1046 urges the Court to reject Janus’s challenge on the ground that it does not raise a valid First Amendment claim. The amicu... More »
AFSCME filed its response brief in Janus last week. It defends Abood‘s distinction between collective bargaining and lobbying as doctrinally sound and makes a number of other arguments. Jurisdiction AFSCME first argues that the Court lacks subject matte... More »
Wes Turner is a J.D. candidate at Washington University School of Law. In the upcoming case Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court appears poised to hold that agency fees in the public sector violate the First Amendment. The argument runs, in short, that an automa... More »
The American Center for Law and Justice, a religiously oriented free speech advocacy organization, filed an amicus brief in Janus critiquing Professor Sachs Agency Fees and the First Amendment, 131 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming Feb. 2018) (summarized here). Nota... More »
Last week, First Amendment scholars Professors Charles Fried and Robert Post filed this amicus brief in Janus in support of neither party. On the one hand, Fried and Post worry that First Amendment “doctrines would be substantially undermined were this C... More »
The United States filed an amicus brief last night in Janus v. AFSCME asking the Supreme Court to overrule Abood and to hold that public sector agency fee agreements are unconstitutional. This represents a change in the federal government’s position sin... More »