Based on the freedom of association, the Court ruled this term in Harris v. Quinn that the First Amendment prohibits a state from collecting an agency fee from certain quasi-public employees who do not want to join or support a union.
Because the statutory scheme that gave rise to this case is complicated, it bears a more extensive summary. Illinois’ Home Services Program (Rehabilitation Program) allows Medicaid recipients who would normally need institutional care to hire a “personal assistant” (PA) to provide homecare services. Under State law, the homecare recipients and the State both play some role in the employment relationship with the PAs, but the recipients’ role is much larger. Homecare recipients control most aspects of the employment relationship, including the hiring, firing, training, supervising, and disciplining of PAs, as well as defining the scope of employment. Other than compensating PAs, the State’s involvement in employment matters is minimal; its employer status was created solely to permit PAs to join a labor union and engage in collective bargaining under Illinois’ Public Labor Relations Act (PLRA).
Pursuant to this scheme, respondent SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana (SEIU–HII) was designated the exclusive union representative for Rehabilitation Program employees. The union entered into collective-bargaining agreements with the State that contained an agency-fee provision, which requires all Rehabilitation Program PAs who do not wish to join the union to pay the union a fee for the cost of certain activities, including those tied to the collective-bargaining process. A group of Rehabilitation Program PAs brought a class action against SEIU–HII and other respondents, claiming that the PLRA violated the First Amendment insofar as it authorized the agency-fee provision.
Justice Alito, writing for a bare majority, distinguished Harris from a previous case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. In Abood, the Court had held that state employees who choose not to join a public-sector union may nevertheless be compelled to pay an agency fee to support union work that is related to the collective-bargaining process. Justice Alito first attacked Abood’s justifications before determining that it should not apply in this case because the PAs are not full public employees. Because state regulations and benefits affecting such employees exist along a continuum, Justice Alito concluded that it would be too difficult to draw the line for applying Abood short of full-fledged public employment.
Because Abood does not control, the Court applied strict scrutiny. In order to survive, the agency-fee provision must serve a compelling state interest that cannot be achieved through means significantly less restrictive of associational freedoms. Under that standard, the Court concluded, the agency-fee provision fails because none of the interests that respondents contend are furthered by the agency-fee provision were sufficient. According to the Court, the agency-fee provision cannot be sustained unless the union could not adequately advocate without the receipt of nonmember agency fees—which respondents failed to show.
Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, dissented, asserting the Abood conclusively answers the question before the Court. But the dissent was mollified by the fact that the majority did not take this case as an opportunity to overrule Abood, which had been perhaps the main goal of the petitioners. According to Justice Kagan, Abood is the foundation for thousands of contracts between unions and governments across the Nation, and to reverse that decision would have been disastrous.
The effects of this case are at once limited and potentially very broad. On one hand, it only affects partial state employees. On the other hand, it opens up the door for much more litigation on precisely that point: what makes an employee a full employee and what level of private control takes an employee outside of Abood? Moreover, the majority’s harsh words for Abood may signify a willingness to further limit or even overrule that decision in the future.