It's easy to get caught up in the euphoria of the Hobby Lobby ruling, but in the course of that celebration it's wise not to forget what could be a far more consequential ruling handed down by the Supreme Court yesterday - that of Harris v. Quinn. This is the one in which public employee unions got their heads handed to them by the Justices. And the implications could be far-reaching not only for the freedom of home health care workers, but also for the way money flows into our political system.
At issue was the ability of states to compel home health care workers to join public employee unions, on the flimsy premise that accepting state-administered Medicaid funds for their services essentially turned them into state employees. Several Democrat-run states had joined with the Service Employees International Union to perpetrate this gambit, and one of them (not surprisingly) was Illinois, which got challenged in court for it.
Yesterday, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and the SEIU lost big, as the Wall Street Journal reports:
n Illinois some 20,000 independent contractors and family members caring for loved ones have had to pony up around $10 million in fees each year to the SEIU. That money is then used to re-elect politicians who vote to expand union pay and pensions, as well as Medicaid payments that the SEIU also gets a share of.
Justice Alito's ruling drew a distinction between these quasi-government workers and the "full-fledged" public employees who were required to pay union dues under the Court's Abood v. Detroit Board of Education precedent in 1977. In that sense unions dodged a more sweeping decision that could have jeopardized dues payments from all public workers.
Justice Alito wrote that the Court did not have to go that far because Illinois law only covered home workers for the purposes of unionization, not for other state benefits or protections. So the Justices also did not have to overturn Abood.
But that doesn't mean the precedent will survive a future case because Justice Alito eviscerated much of its logic. Since Abood, the High Court has said workers can be compelled to pay dues that go to collectively bargain for wages and benefits, but they can't be compelled to pay dues that go to political activities. Justice Alito's opinion on Monday further distinguishes between public and private unions in their politically coercive implications for free speech.
The distinction between money for union operations and money for political activities is crucially important. It's one thing to tell someone that, as a member of an organization, you have a responsibility to contribute to that organizaton's operational functions. It's another thing entirely to say you must contribute money that will be used to support political candidates favored by the organization's leaders, but not necessarily favored by you. In actual practice, what this does - and has done for years - is to force Republicans who are union members to see their money confiscated from them under force of law and used to support Democrats running for office.
And this is especially insidious when public employee unions do it. It is a racket in which public employees raise compulsory dues from members who are forced to pay, then use the money to support Democrats who, once elected, reward the unions with generous compensation packages and benefits. The unions then, in turn, raise more money to support these same Democrats, rinse, repeat, world without end, Amen.
Democrats will argue that business groups give money to Republican candidates as well, and that's true, although not as monolithically true as the reverse. But the difference is that businesses are not required by law to be members of these organizations or to pay dues. If they do so, they do so voluntarily. At least for home health care workers, who are obviously not real state employees at all, at least that playing field has now been evened.
By the way, to those who say that accepting Medicaid takes away the workers' right to opt out, I say, when we craft a system that doesn't usurp almost every available dollar for indigent medical care and then shovel it back to the states via Washington - such that it becomes virtually impossible for anyone to provide the service without it - then talk to me about how people who accept Medicare funds forfeit their rights.
The Supreme Court had a good day yesterday, while Democrats and unions had a bad one. But I repeat myself.
