Teachers vs Union

An article in the Olympian today highlights a point that has been largely overlooked to date. While the WEA is the ultimate looser in the Davenport victory, the Washington state Supreme Court is the biggest—the six justices who found a way to twist the First Amendment to protect the rights of unions (campaign contributors) over the rights of individual teachers.

Justice Scalia wrote that the six Washington state Supreme Court justices were wrong on two counts:

• First, the Washington State Supreme Court applied a test to balance what they thought were the competing rights of teachers and unions. Justice Scalia pointed out, however, that this balancing test doesn’t exist.

“[The agency-fee cases] were not balancing constitutional rights in the manner [the WEA and the Washington State Supreme Court] suggests, for the simple reason that unions have no constitutional entitlement to the fees of nonmember-employees.”

• Second, even if the bogus balancing test the Washington State Supreme Court applied existed, the six justices applied it wrongly. It should have been balanced in favor of individual teachers.

“[C]ourts have an obligation to interfere with a union’s statutory entitlement no more than is necessary to vindicate the rights of non-members…”

In the same sense, the citizens of Washington are losers because, as Mr. DeForest noted:

"We, the people, look to the state Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution of this country. This decision by the U.S. Supreme Court says very clearly (albeit not in so many words) that the six state supreme court justices voting to uphold the WEA did not understand and/or correctly apply the First Amendment to the Constitution."