Supreme Court: You Can’t Call Homecare Workers Public Employees and Force Unions on Them

Before ruling on the Hobby
Lobby contraception case, which is probably all you’re hearing
about right now, the Supreme Court also released a decision on
Harris v. Quinn, an important case on public union
membership.

In a narrow, partisan, 5-4 ruling, the court determined that
Illinois cannot simply declare that home health care workers are
public employees on the basis of them receiving government health
funding and then force them to pay for union representation. Though
this is a blow for unions, the impact is much less than it could
have been. The majority did not rule that public employees, as a
whole, could not be forced to pay dues to unions to represent them,
even if they didn’t want to belong to the union. Rather, the court
ruled that these previous precedents did not extend to home care
workers, who are privately employed, regardless of any government
subsidies.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the decision and was joined by
justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence
Thomas. He takes several paragraphs pointing out that these home
workers are hired and paid for by private citizens, not the state
of Illinois, and that the petitioners in the case were providing
care for family members. They sued, arguing that forcing them to
pay union dues was a violation of their First Amendment. In
discussing the case, the court had to analyze precedents from

Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. This decision
authorized for authorized public sector unions to draw fees from
workers even if they didn’t want to be members of the union, just
as previous precedents had allowed so for the private sector. The
justification is that doing so preserves labor peace (conflict
resulting from multiple bargaining units for the same groups of
employees) and avoiding “free riders” (employees getting the
benefits from collective bargaining without contributing to the
union).

But Alito describes all the many, many ways these home
healthcare workers are not state employees. They are not given
access to state employee benefits and are not protected or covered
by laws that target state employees. Alito writes, “The Illinois
Legislature has taken pains to specify that personal assistants are
public employees for one purpose only: collective bargaining.”
Alito notes that because of this odd classification, a union can’t
actually represent these workers in cases where, for example, a
home worker is fired for specious reasons. The ruling also noted
that the “labor peace” argument didn’t apply here, as these
homecare workers were hired individually to work in homes and thus
labor peace was not an issue or potential conflict.

In conclusion, the majority ruled not to extend the
Abood decision in this situation: “If we accepted
Illinois’ argu­ment, we would approve an unprecedented violation of
the bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of
circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to
subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to
support. The First Amendment prohibits the collection of an agency
fee from personal assistants in the Rehabilitation Program who do
not want to join or support the union.”

While this is a limited decision, it does extend outside of
Illinois. It is not the only state who has forced homecare workers
to pay union fees. And while the court didn’t address the larger
issues of forcing unionization (and union dues) on public
employees, the majority opinion in several places express concerns
and suggests flaws with the Abood precedent. The justices
weren’t willing to push further on this case, but the way Alito
talks about the Abood case could be seen as a signal that
the conservative justices, at least, may be interested in looking
deeper into union law.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissenting opinion, arguing that
the state’s unionization of healthcare employees falls well within
the Abood precedent and claims that the workers have
“joint employers” of their customer and the state. The more liberal
justices do not appear to be wanting to rethink the Abood
decision anytime soon.

Read the full ruling here
(pdf). Some previous analysis of the case is
here. More about the plaintiff
here.