Attempts to recover the lost wages are in effect from the Caregivers who had let go of their Medicaid payments for an illegal scheme regarding forced dues.
In a petition to the Supreme Court, a band of caregivers went on to ask the overturning of the decisions by the lower court that had stopped a class action case aimed at fighting for $32 million from the SEIU healthcare from Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas. The caregivers or the ‘home health aides’ who work by providing full-time care to the sick were enforced to pay the money to inform of Union fee, regardless that the Medicaid had set the reimbursement rates instead of the SEIU.
In a case, Harris v. Quinn, the Supreme Court in 2014 had ruled 5-4 that the plan was illegal and that the caregivers could not considered government employees. Though the plaintiffs put up an argument that the court at least should give an order to recover the losses caused by the forceful payments made. If the case turns successful, the ruling would ensure that the payments made are voluntary and would take out the burden of withdrawing support from the individual caregivers.
“The unauthorized fee seizure itself would inflict a First Amendment injury. So called ‘opt-out’ requirements would be unconstitutional, as only an ‘opt-in’ requirement—i.e., that the individual consent to the deduction of union fees—would not inflict a First Amendment injury,” the petition said.
The deduction of dues scheme was first placed in effect by the Ex-Governor, Rod Blagojevich who is imprisoned and was then continued by Democrat Pat Quinn went on to take Rod’s place. Many of the other states too had a similar system, and they have put an end to the programs after the Supreme Court’s rulings. Though the case allows the caregivers to stop their union dues, there is still no reimbursement procedure for the whole system for the previous payments made.
“To prove injury, and the complete constitutional tort, plaintiffs must prove contemporaneous subjective opposition to the compelled payments,” District Court Judge Manish Shah had ruled in 2016.
“A holding in this case that an agency fee seizure injures nonmembers’ First Amendment rights, even absent objection, would settle whether unions can require nonmembers to object to paying agency fees to avoid fee seizures,” the petition further says. “A class certification case, like this, is the ideal context in which to evaluate that question because only a plaintiff class will include individuals who silently endured agency fee seizures.”
The petitioners are of the view that the workers are in dire need of a way to recover lost wages and to stop the motivations that unions make up through their illegal dues schemes. If they are still allowed to keep the money from what courts have deemed illegal dues collection, they would attempt to keep the pipelines active for all the forced dues collections, said the plaintiffs.
“To allow unions to profit from unconstitutional fee seizures will beget more unconstitutional fee seizures,” the petition said. “Public sector unions will have little incentive to comply with that ruling and cease their agency fee seizures. Instead, unions will have a strong financial incentive to keep seizing fees from nonmembers until a court forces them to stop.”