Janus v. AFSCME - Supreme Court Strikes Down Public Sector Union Fees, Targeting Teachers' Unions

On June 27, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Janus v. AFSCME that public-sector unions cannot collect “fair share” fees from non-members to cover the costs of collective bargaining, overturning the Court’s 1977 precedent in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. The decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, was a culmination of a decades-long conservative legal campaign specifically targeting teachers’ unions and effectively imposed “right to work” conditions on every public employee in America.

The case was brought by Mark Janus, an Illinois state employee who objected to paying fees to AFSCME. But Janus was merely the named plaintiff in a case orchestrated by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the Liberty Justice Center, and the broader network of conservative legal organizations funded by the Koch brothers, Bradley Foundation, and other anti-union donors. The plaintiffs had been shopping for the right case since Justice Alito signaled in Knox v. SEIU (2012) and Harris v. Quinn (2014) that the Court was prepared to overturn Abood.

Justice Alito’s majority opinion held that requiring non-members to pay for collective bargaining violated their First Amendment rights because all public-sector bargaining is inherently “political.” This reasoning—that negotiating over wages, benefits, and working conditions constitutes political speech—fundamentally reframed labor relations as political activism, making public-sector unions uniquely vulnerable to constitutional attack.

Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent excoriated the majority for overturning settled precedent to achieve a political objective: “There is no sugarcoating today’s opinion. The majority overthrows a decision entrenched in this Nation’s law—and in its economic life—for over 40 years… The First Amendment was meant for better things.”

The decision’s primary target was teachers’ unions, the largest and most politically consequential public-sector unions. The National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) together represented over 4.5 million members and were among the largest political donors to Democratic candidates. By enabling free-riding—allowing employees to receive union benefits without paying for them—Janus was designed to drain union resources and political power.

The post-Janus landscape confirmed the decision’s intended effects. Public-sector union membership declined, with teachers’ unions losing hundreds of thousands of members as conservative organizations like the State Policy Network funded campaigns urging teachers to “opt out.” The decision represented the culmination of a strategy articulated by political operatives: weaken public-sector unions, and you weaken the Democratic Party’s infrastructure, making pro-privatization, anti-public-education policies easier to enact.