In the 2018 Janus decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects individual public employees from having to financially support unions to which they do not wish to belong. But labor law continues to require “exclusive representation”; individual public employees may not bargain on their own behalf in place of the designated union, nor may they enlist a different union to represent their interests. (Meanwhile, and also problematically, incumbent unions are tasked with a legal duty to represent individual employees even if they reject membership and decline to pay dues.) Jonathan Reisman is an economics professor at the University of Maine-Machias who does not wish to be represented by the recognized faculty union, which he does not believe represents his own priorities either on work-specific issues such as wages and schedules or on public policy more broadly. Reisman is now seeking Supreme Court review of his action seeking relief from exclusive representation on First Amendment grounds [Trevor Burrus and Michael Collins on Cato certiorari amicus brief in Reisman v. Associated Faculties of the University of Maine]

Filed under: First Amendment, labor unions, public employment