In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that under the First Amendment, the government could not restrict a corporation’s independent political spending, even in the interest of aligning corporate expression with shareholders’ views. In contrast, an earlier Court case, Abood v. Detroit of Board of Education, conditioned the ability of unions to use fees from non-members for political spending on a mechanism for non-members to opt out of fees not directly used in collective bargaining. In Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association—currently awaiting oral argument in the Court’s October Term 2015—again deals with speech by labor unions, which the Supreme Court has compared to speech by corporations.

Presently, California requires that public schoolteachers either join the California Teachers Union or pay “agency fees” to compensate the union for its efforts on their behalf. Plaintiffs, a group of teachers, argue that these fees constitute forced subsidization of the union’s speech. Pinning their claim to the First Amendment, plaintiffs are seeking to invalidate agency fees altogether, or else require non-union members to affirmatively consent to subsidizing the union’s speech. In effect, plaintiffs are seeking to overturn Abood, converting an opt-out to an opt-in. The CTU, on the other hand, argues that the opt-out already required by Abood means that non-union teachers are not forced to pay for union speech at all.

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