Editorials

Reuters on Harris v. Quinn Argument

Benjamin Sachs

Benjamin Sachs is the Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School and a leading expert in the field of labor law and labor relations. He is also faculty director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy. Professor Sachs teaches courses in labor law, employment law, and law and social change, and his writing focuses on union organizing and unions in American politics. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 2008, Professor Sachs was the Joseph Goldstein Fellow at Yale Law School.  From 2002-2006, he served as Assistant General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Washington, D.C.  Professor Sachs graduated from Yale Law School in 1998, and served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the New York Times and elsewhere.  Professor Sachs received the Yale Law School teaching award in 2007 and in 2013 received the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence at Harvard Law School.  He can be reached at [email protected].

Amanda Becker at Reuters has a careful and good review of today’s argument in Harris v. Quinn.  She concludes:

The U.S. Supreme Court seemed unlikely on Tuesday to embrace a sweeping argument advanced by a group of Illinois state employees that paying mandatory union dues violates their free-speech rights.

Backed by the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the employees, who care for the disabled, have asked the court to upend a decades-old practice that lets public-sector unions collect money from workers who do not want union representation, so long as the money is not spent on political activities.

Justices on the high court expressed reluctance to reconsider its 1977 ruling in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. That ruling said unions could collect such compulsory dues under collective bargaining agreements.

The piece is worth a read.

Enjoy OnLabor’s fresh takes on the day’s labor news, right in your inbox.