Tribune Misses the Mark #4

This is the fourth in a series of postings on the Harris v. Quinn opinion of the US Supreme Court.  In their analysis of this case, I believe the News Tribune has missed the mark. 

(8)   Justice Kagan, in her dissent, writes that the Abood case, which is the precedent in this situation, “held that a government entity may, consistently with the First Amendment, require public employees to pay a fair share of the cost that a union incurs negotiating on their behalf for better terms of employment.”  She goes on to mention something Justice Alito carefully avoided mentioning in the majority decision; “That is exactly what Illinois did in entering into collective bargaining agreements with the Service Employees International Union Healthcare.”  Justice Alito made no mention of the negotiations between the union and the state, but made a big point of the fact that state involvement is limited to statutes that govern the industry.  It would seem to be both a conscious and deliberate omission.

(9)   Since it is clear that negotiations between the union and the state have taken place and will most likely continue to take place, the Abood case becomes the appropriate precedent for deciding this case, unlike Justice Alito’s characterization that this case (Harris v Quinn) is an “anomaly”.

(10)   In Justice Kagan’s dissent, we learn that Harris and the SEIU workers are not the motivation of the law suit.  It would appear that overturning Abood was the primary motivation.  As Justice Kagan puts it, “The petitioners devoted the lion’s share of their briefing and argument to urging us to overturn that (Abood) nearly 40-year old precedent…”  According to Kagan the best Alito could do was take “potshots at Abood”  She goes on to say, that Abood “is the foundation for not tens or hundreds, but thousands of contracts between unions and governments across the Nation.”