Does The First Amendment Protect Public Employees?

Protect The 1st Files Amicus Brief in Kurk v. LRCEA Challenging State Forced Association Statute

​On December 28th, the Protect The 1st Foundation filed an amicus brief in the upcoming case Kristine Kurk v. Los Rios Classified Employees Association. The case is currently being heard in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and concerns whether the First Amendment protects a public employee’s right to resign union membership at will.
 
Twenty-five years ago, Kristine Kurk signed a form allowing the Los Rios Community College District to deduct fees from her salary and send them to her union, the Los Rios Classified Employees Association. Recently, when Kurk attempted to resign her membership, the Union used a California statute’s authorization of “organizational security agreements” to force Kurk to remain a full member, including requiring her government employer to seize money from her paycheck and give it to the union.
 
Requiring Kurk to remain a member would mean her dues would be used to support political candidates and legislation that she may have no interest in supporting. In essence, Kurk’s forced membership is akin to forced expression and thus violates the First Amendment.
 
As stated in our amicus brief, “The Ninth Circuit and other courts of appeals have consistently tried to evade the First Amendment’s requirements as articulated in Janus. In doing so, they have blessed ‘maintenance-of-membership’ statutes that burden speech and association at the core of the First Amendment’s protections. Compelled speech and association, whether it lasts a few months or, as in this case, a few years, raises the specter of a First Amendment violation. This Court should grant the petition to affirm Janus’s underlying principle that states and unions may not conspire to compel speech or association on matters of public concern.”
 
For reasons explained at length in our brief, Protect the 1st strongly believes that a law violates the First Amendment when it substantially impedes a union member’s ability to resign his or her membership in response to the union’s spending the member’s dues on speech with which the member disagrees.