Limitations on union use of nonmember fees approved
In Davenport v. Washington Ed. Assn., the U.S. Supreme Court held that “opt-in” schemes to permit unions to use fees paid by non-unions members for political purposes are constitutional. The case involved fees paid by non-union members to the Washington Education Association, a union representing education workers in the State of Washington. Through payroll deduction, it collects fees from nonmembers. , and used approximately $10 of those fees per contributor for political activity. The Washington Supreme Court determined the statute violated the first amendment, as it interfered with the union’s right of expressive association.
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, finding that because the state had the power to determine the union’s ability to collect fees from nonmembers in the first place—in essence, a power to tax government employees—that right necessarily included the ability to place limitations upon the use of such fees. Unions have no constitutional right to fees from nonunion members. The statute’s does not restrict “how the union can spend ‘its’ money”; it places a condition on “the union’s extraordinary state entitlement to acquire and spend other people’s money.”
The decision does address not the constitutionality of opt-in requirements for private-sector unions that “collect agency fees through contractually required action taken by private employers rather than by government agencies” and therefore present “a somewhat different constitutional question.”
