The Trump Administration’s Solicitor General, Noel Francisco, is America’s top litigator, and is fighting to break the corrupt monopoly that public sector unions have over the American government.
The Administration filed a brief against the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), challenging their aggressive, and coercive unionizing practices. The case concerns a 1977 Supreme Court case Abood v Detroit Board of Education.
Unsurprisingly, past Administrations have chosen to interpret and to argue that the precedents set by the Abood case are not gross violations of free speech. However, the Trump Administration is taking a stand for freedom of speech for America’s civil servants, against the corrupting influence of labor unionism (within the public sector).
The Abood decision, as argued is used as a justification for forcing public servants to pay – not just union dues – but all manner of “union fees” as a condition of their employment automatically.
“Abood thus ultimately endorsed precisely what it simultaneously prohibited: compelled subsidization of union speech for political or ideological causes,” the brief explains.
Past administrations have defended this bogus interpretation on allegedly pragmatic grounds, by spitting the patent lie that “unions preserve fairness and harmony in the workplace.” How stupid! However, the Trump administration is powerfully making the obvious case that all public sectors have been engaged in political speech. And for the government to effectively subsidize partisan political speech is blatantly unconstitutional. Indeed, public sector unions use theise compulsory dues to lobby congress, the federal government, and even state and local governments, to enrich themselves at taxpayer’s expense.
This mandatory payment of union fee is violating the right of speech of the public workers by pushing them into contributing to the political negotiations.
“In the public sector, speech in collective bargaining is necessarily speech about public issues. Virtually every matter at stake in a public-sector labor agreement affects the public fisc, and therefore is a matter of public policy concerning all citizens,” the brief stated. “To compel a public employee to subsidize his union’s bargaining position on these questions is to force him to support private political and ideological viewpoints with which he may strongly disagree.”
The plaintiff’s case is set to be boosted by the support it has been receiving from the federal government as per the labor lawyers all over the country. The brief further opens chances for the Solicitor General Noel Francisco to participate in oral arguments before the Court. Todd Lyon, a management-side attorney working with Fisher Phillips, said it would “add value to the overall argument. My instinct is that the solicitor general is granted that oral argument whenever they are involved in a case,” he stated. “Having the weight of the federal government supporting the position of the plaintiffs would add quite a bit of value.”
Another attorney at the Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete – David Phippen said that he cannot see the brief changing much of the perspective of the judges who would have the final say in the case, he further said, “It was a very succinct and good argument that did not overreach. All things being equal, it’s helpful. I think the justices are going to fairly evaluate the case as they see fit, but on the margins having the solicitor general go in can only help—mostly because he [Francisco] is a very good lawyer.”