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In Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, the U.S. Supreme Court held that requiring public employees to financially support the labor organization which exclusively represents them for purposes of collective bargaining violates the First Amendment. The Court further said that a public employer’s requiring “that a union serve as exclusive bargaining agent” is “itself a significant impingement on associational freedom.” However, since Janus was decided, the Court has turned down several petitions for certiorari that asked it to decide whether public-sector monopoly bargaining arrangements violate the First Amendment.
Sometimes good facts can change the result of litigation concerning a legal issue. With that in mind, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and The Fairness Center attorneys filed yet another challenge to public-sector monopoly bargaining. This time, the lawsuit is brought for a group of mostly Jewish professors at the City University of New York (CUNY) who resigned from membership in the union that is their monopoly bargaining representative under New York State law, the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY, because of that union’s anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic political and ideological advocacy. This lawsuit, Goldstein v. Professional Staff Congress/CUNY, is described in a September 19, 2022, National Review article, and the complaint is available at Goldstein v. PSC/CUNY.
