Earlier today, the US Supreme Supreme Court split 4-4 on the Friedrichs case, leaving the lower court decision undisturbed. At issue was whether teachers should be required to pay union fees. Not at issue was paying for the union’s political activities, which was previously decided (members don’t have to).
A reader asked what supporters of Friedrichs were saying about the decision. Here are “expert opinions” from the conservative Heartland Institute, which opposes unions.
“Heartland Education Experts React to Decision in
Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association
On Tuesday, March 29, the United States Supreme Court issued a one-sentence ruling in the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.” The 4–4 tie from the Supreme Court means the lower court ruling remains intact, compelling public employees to pay union agency shop dues even if they do not belong to the union.
The following statements from education experts at The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact New Media Specialist Donald Kendal at dkendal@heartland.org and 312/377-4000.
“The ramifications of Justice Scalia’s death are seen early in this Court session with the continued protection of public-sector unions. Non-union members will continue to be forced to pay for the political agenda of union bosses. This case should be reheard once a new justice is seated. “
Lennie Jarratt
Project Manager, Education
The Heartland Institute
ljarratt@heartland.org
847/302-3985
“After the death of Justice Scalia, it appeared Friedrichs was fated to a split decision, and this was indeed the case. While the plaintiffs plan on filing again, it is yet to be determined if the justices will take it up a second time, and what the makeup of the court will be at that time.
“Even though this split was almost assured, it is still a disappointment. Lovers of liberty can at least hang their hat on the knowledge that more and more states are ending mandatory dues collections on their own.”
Tim Benson
Policy Analyst
The Heartland Institute
tbenson@heartland.org
312/377-4000
“This Supreme Court decision, favoring the California Teachers Association, effectively forces teachers who declined union membership to be forced into it. In a blue state like California, these teachers have alternatives, but none of their options will be easy to exercise. Could they become non-unionized teachers in charter schools or private schools? Not easily. Would they move to a state, such as Wisconsin, that has a right-to-work law? Getting hired there might be easier but moving and the uprooting would be their challenge.”
David Anderson
Senior Fellow, Education
The Heartland Institute
david.anderson@asoraeducation.com
312/377-4000
The Heartland Institute is a 32-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes! Move to a right to work state for a lower salary and freedom from union dues. I am sure people will be running away from CA to that awesome opportunity.
Friedrichs should have no trouble getting a job in a nonunion charter. There are many in California and lots of turnover
The conservative Republicans thought they could “win” by not replacing Scalia. There are more 4/4 decisions yet to come before the next election. Wouldn’t it be nice to see them eat their words?
Was this not a case where the plaintiff sued so as not to have to pay the agency fees associated with costs incurred by the union for negotiating the union’s contract? If so, that is a far cry from being required to pay union dues.
Correct, and that’s the essential absurdity of the claims to the contrary. Refutation by propaganda? Typical whining of sore loosers.
This case should remind us that while the nomination of SCOTUS justices is the most important political appointment that POTUS can make, there are a lot of other important ones. For example, NLRB board members.
I can’t parse the legal dimensions, but the unions need to gear up for additional challenges and also get going on a review of their vulnerabilities from within–evidenced in many of the blog posts here and elsewhere.
There are obvious vulnerabilities from the free marketers. Unions should also stop getting in bed with the many groups intent on making teaching nothing more than a temp job to support computer-delivered instruction.
I do not understand why there cannot be more support for teachers from other public sector unions.
Because unions still don’t get it that if they take out one they are one step closer to screwing them despite promises a la Scott Walker. Then there are the union leaders who have gone over to the dark side and are only interested in their own hides. I am all for eliminating stupid union rules, but I am also for living wages. Why nonunion workers don’t get that everyone’s wages go up with a healthy union movement. Without collective bargaining, we are toast.
I hear you when you recognize that there are union leaders/reps who have joined “the dark side.” My own experience is that unions are a very complicated beast, made up of those who would fight tooth and nail for protecting children — and those who would sell out in a heartbeat simply to promote selfish interests.
Yes, unions are the one thing keeping the teaching profession alive. Without teaching unions, within a generation “teachers” will be nothing more than hourly-paid computer monitors.
Because billionaires give them mucho dinero to support the breakup of public institutions.
Laura–Parents want certified teachers to teach their children. Parents do not want 300 students in a room with computer delivered instruction. Now that the medical community has raised questions about the effects of technology on children’s health, parents have more reason to be concerned. It is time for the unions to get support from parents to help stop the corporate take over of public schools.
Always learning – it doesn’t matter what the parents want…its what the billionaires want. THEY won’t have their kids, grandkids, in charters or cyber “schools” sitting at a kitchen table getting their learning on. The 1% will continue to shovel their drivel, whilst protecting their own.
A recent Wash. Post article on our very segregated Private Schools clearly suggests this to be true!
It’s comical to think that these conservatives are interested in protecting the rights of teachers when all they’ve done is spend big money to take away teacher’s rights.
Yes…because part of the definition of liberty is the freedom to pay teachers nothing. I’m sure John Locke said something like that.
🙂
Heartland Institute is really just a pathetic joke.
They also claim that climate change is a hoax.
Conserfitude —
Corporations are persons, workers are peons.
“Corporations are persons, …”
Interesting contradiction: while the Supreme court, with freedom lover Scalia’s blessing, treats corporations as people, Milton Friedman—the pope of the free-market—listens to a chorus named after him and which sings Friedman’s opinion on corporations.
Friedman makes it completely clear elsewhere: he writes,
What does it mean to say that “business” has responsibilities? Only people can have responsibilities.
http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html
The famous article simply explains the title “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits” and makes it a philosophy.
“What does it mean to say that “business” has responsibilities? Only people can have responsibilities. ”
Wow! Good catch, Máté Wierdl.
A followup on Friedman: I am quoting from http://www.mackinac.org/17300
Milton Friedman is considered by some to be the father of today’s education reform movement. While this is a bit of a stretch, Friedman’s ideas have been extremely influential within the school choice movement and are frequently used to make both the economic and moral case for expanding parents’ freedom to choose the school they think is best for their children.
[…]
Friedman advocated using vouchers to bring market-like principles to the public school system and reform its monopoly and lack of incentives for performance.
Explicit quotes from Friedman (1960’s) on education
http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Milton_Friedman_Education.htm
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Merit pay for teachers
With respect to teachers’ salaries, the major problem is not that they are too low on the average, but that they are too uniform and rigid. Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority, degrees received, and teaching certificates acquired than by merit.
If one were to seek deliberately to devise a system of recruiting and paying teachers calculated to repel the imaginative and daring, and to attract the mediocre and uninspiring, he could hardly do better than imitate the system of requiring teaching certificates and enforcing standard salary structures that has developed in the largest city and state-wide systems. It is perhaps surprising that the level of ability in elementary and secondary school teaching is as high as it is under these circumstances. The alternative system would resolve these problems and permit competition to be effective in rewarding merit and attracting ability to teaching.
“Lovers of liberty” – Bwahahahaha!
Lovers of Freedmanism.
oh yeah right let’s get rid of union dues and then we can all get paid at the lowest rate possible for a professional with a college degree. Ms. Friedrichs -Take a class in labor history and get back to me because you are not only ungrateful for the hard work of others but ignorant too.
In Pennsylvania we have the ironically named Paycheck Protection Bill working its way through Harrisburg which would get rid of taking union dues out as an automatic paycheck deduction. Just another attack not only on teacher unions but really all unions.
I am surprised that they don’t go for a bill to stop automatic pension deductions somewhere in the U.S. Then they could make a case for eliminating pensions since you know there are people who would not keep up with their contributions for one reason or another.
Pittsburgh’s largest employer:
“There have been plenty of protest demonstrations and plenty of arrests at those demonstrations, focused on just what a living wage should be at UPMC facilities.
But on Tuesday, UPMC, which once challenged whether $15 per hour was feasible, announced that sum as a starting wage to be phased in to its payroll system.
“We really felt no pressure from external sources whether it’s organizing campaigns or from the government,” said UPMC Human Resources executive John Galley. “This was really a decision that our senior leadership made together in terms of a place that we want to be.”
For workers who fought for this day, like Leslie Poston, a UPMC Presbyterian worker who makes $13 an hour, they still think efforts between unions and government worked in their favor.
“I think collectively,” she said. “It started off with a few of us and with the SEIU behind us and elected city county elected officials, yes I think it came through. They had felt the pressure, they heard us and we’re going to continue to fight.”
The union-backed Fight for Fifteen effort has arguably done more for low income students than any ed reform ever invented, by improving the economic situation for their families, and they did it without hiring thousands of 3 figure lobbyists and experts and they did it with 3/4’s of politicians and the ed reform movement fighting labor unions every step of they way. They “care deeply” about low income students but not enough to pay their parents more than 10 bucks an hour, apparently.
How can they claim to care about low income students and ignore the households they live in and the wages their parents earn? It’s bizarre.
The Democratic Party must be crushed. Now they’ll have to continue to pretend they support labor rights for another cycle.
I’ve been listening to the Presidential debates. Welders are very popular this cycle. They’re all reciting the word “welder”.
When is the last time any of these people met with a real live welder, or is “welder” a kind of code for “working person” in DC? Has a welder ever entered the Kasich or Cruz or Clinton home other than to repair something?