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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-06-15

Body Blow To Teachers' Unions

The Supreme Court upheld a Washington state law today that said unions (in this case in particular, the Washington Education Association) must ask its members' permission to use union dues for political purposes. The Washington State Supreme Court had held, inexplicably, that such a requirement violated the unions' Free Speech, but they were overruled.

This was a close one, however. After the Washington Court held by 6-3 in favor of the teachers' union, SCOTUS slapped them down UNANIMOUSLY. In fact, Justice Scalia's opinion was only 13 pages long--startlingly short, given the amount of space devoted to background and such.

The REAL question for us here in Colorado, is how to make use of this ruling. We can be fairly certain that this state legislature will NEVER pass a law saying that unions have to get permission to use dues for politics--Big Education would have a cow! So it is incumbent on interested members of the public--THAT WOULD BE US!--to get an initiative going to take away a big chunk of the unions' power.

I'd be happy to work on that committee, if anybody out there has the expertise to actually get this going.
Posted by: Michael / 6/15/2007 12:44:00 AM

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