April 14th 2021
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In February, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME. Today, a slight majority of the Court issued a decision that regrettably impacts far more than just “fair share” fees and the more than 40-year-old precedent established by Abood v. Detroit...
The Supreme Court holds this morning in Janus v. AFSCME that public sector union fees violate "the free speech rights of nonmembers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern." The majority opinion was written by...
Justice Gorsuch’s silence during the Janus oral argument generated considerable buzz. Wishful (yet tentative) commentators hoped the silence was a sign that the new Justice’s originalism would lead him to uphold Abood. To be sure, Justice Thomas, the Court’s...
After the oral argument in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, I wrote that the five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court would have to put their thumbs heavily on the scale for the employers to prevail. Sadly, it was no surprise that this is exactly what happened....
Workers' rights took a hit from a split Supreme Court yesterday in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Gorsuch that resolved three cases: Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, NLRB v. Murphy Oil, and Ernst & Young, LLP v. Morris. OnLabor's Maddy Joseph summarized the...
The Supreme Court holds this morning in Murphy Oil that class and collective action bars in arbitration agreements are enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and are not incompatible with the NLRA. The majority opinion by Justice Gorsuch is notable...
At the end of February, the Supreme Court granted cert. in New Prime, Inc. v. Oliveira. In so doing, the Court added to the list of cases that examine how and to what extent the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) applies in the employment context (see our coverage of...
So far, President Trump has appointed a Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, who may cast the deciding vote to upend decades of settled labor law in two major cases, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis and Janus v. AFSCME; he has nominated dozens of right-wing lawyers for...
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 effects of...
Last week on the blog, we wrote about why the NLRB should withdraw the Hy-Brand decision (here and here)---in short, because a Board member who voted for the result, William Emanuel, should have recused himself (his former law firm represented one of the companies...
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...
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 prognosticators expect the Supreme Court to hand the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF) a win on its claim that such fees violate the First Amendment rights of non-union workers. Yet, as I develop further below, the history that led to Janus offers three thin rays of hope to the labor movement.