Unions and Your Political Freedoms
By Rep. Nancy Barto and Bob Williams

A case headed to the U.S. Supreme Court has the potential to affect thousands of Arizona Citizens and millions across the nation. If this Washington state Supreme Court ruling is upheld, it has the potential to force workers to support politics they don’t agree with at the expense of the First Amendment rights—just because their union demands it.

This case, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by both the state and local teachers, has several far-reaching, national implications.

First, this court decision gave a clear signal to unions all across the country that it is open season on using dues for political purposes. Yet when given a choice, union members overwhelmingly refuse to support the union’s political activity. When Washington’s law went into effect, voluntary political contributions by teachers dropped by 85 percent. In Utah, where union membership is voluntary, a similar law resulted in a 90 percent drop-off in teacher contributions. The union knows this and therefore will fight laws that strengthen worker protections.

Unions already wield enormous political power by raiding the paychecks of the workers they
claim to represent. In the 2004 presidential election cycle alone, organized labor raised a reported $199.5 million for their own political organizations. With unfettered access to workers paychecks, imagine the unions’ dominance in the next elections—all at the expense of their employees and without their assent.

Second, the Court provided an example of judicial activism at its worst, usurping the role of the legislature. Each state legislature gives the unions in their state the ability to collect dues, and therefore the legislative branch alone should have the authority to regulate the collection of dues, not a group of activist judges.

Even in “right-to-work” states, such as ours, where workers have a choice whether or not to join the union, the question of whether or not their dues should be spent on politics is a debate that should happen in the legislature, not the courts.

One justice said in his dissent that this decision “turns the First Amendment on its head” and threatens the free speech rights of workers across the country. He was right. This relatively unknown case, first brought by local teachers and public policy organization, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and eventually prosecuted by the state Attorney General, has the potential to affect over 17 million union-represented workers across the country. The Washington Court gave a clear signal to unions across the nation that they now had the ultimate authorization to use their workers’ money for politics regardless of how they feel about it.

The U.S. Supreme Court should agree to hear the case this fall and should overturn it when it comes to court. The Washington Court has placed the statutory rights of unions ahead of the constitutional rights of workers. No one should be forced to support political causes against their will—and that goes for every worker and teacher in America.

Rep. Nancy Barto represents Legislative District 7.

Bob Williams is president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a non-partisan public policy organization based in Washington state, and the original complainant in Washington v. Washington Education Association, currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.