Teachers vs Union

Oral arguments had some sweet questions/comments by the Justices (transcripts available here). If you haven't taken a look, it's well worth your time.


Here are some of my favorites:


JUSTICE KENNEDY: And absent some direction that we have to consider this as only being for a, for purposes of election transparency, it seems to me that Washington acted quite properly in saying we will use this mechanism in order to protect our workers' First Amendment constitutional rights. P 25


JUSTICE SOUTER: And you're saying (Editor's note: referring to WEA attorney John West), first you said well, segregating the funds does not answer the problem. And I thought the reason it didn't answer the problem was that the, that it was, that the purposes of the, of the act were underinclusive. And now you're responding to Justice Ginsburg by going back to making the assumption that the segregated funds would be the union's funds. P 29-30


JUSTICE SCALIA: Here is the Government acting as a coercer. It's because of the Government that you're allowed to get this money from these non-union members.
(WEA attorney) MR. WEST: Well, I don't believe the Court has ever put it quite that way in the Government speech cases, the Government funding cases. P 31-32


JUSTICE STEVENS: Could you just tell me yes or no, and then explain?
MR. WEST: Certainly. Well, the answer is yes and no. The answer is, if you're talking about - (Laughter.) P 33


If you have any favorite lines, feel free to post them. I'll have more later.


Note: This is not an attempt to provide stunning legal commentary, for that see fine posts by Ryan here and here.