David G. Savage | LA Times | http://lat.ms/1UrRuYO
smf: SCOTUS actually had their first tie vote since Justice Scalia died last week over a Missouri Loan Discrimination case. | http://bit.ly/1qfECbA
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March 29, 2016 | 1:26 PM | Reporting from Washington :: A
well-planned legal assault on public unions collapsed Tuesday when the Supreme
Court deadlocked over a California woman’s lawsuit to strike down mandatory
fees, the strongest evidence yet that Justice Antonin Scalia’s death has
stymied the court’s conservative justices.
The 4-4 split keeps in place a 1970s-era rule that authorizes
unions to require municipal employees, teachers, college instructors and
transit workers to pay a “fair share fee” to help cover the cost of collective
bargaining.
The tie vote, widely expected after Scalia’s death,
nevertheless came as a relief to union officials who feared the conservative
justices were on the brink of striking down the pro-union law as a violation of
free speech.
In another sign Tuesday that the high court continues to
grapple with the vacancy left by Scalia, justices asked for additional
briefings in a pending dispute over the Obama administration’s contraceptive
mandate under the Affordable Care Act.
The request was widely seen as an attempt by the justices to
find a compromise in that case, which appeared evenly split during oral arguments
earlier this month.
Tie votes could be a theme this year as justices vote on
several major disputes that divide along ideological lines, including abortion,
election districts and immigration.
The White House said the court’s deadlock in the union case
underscores the need for the Senate to confirm his nominee, Merrick Garland,
chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,
to replace Scalia. The Republican-controlled Senate is refusing to act on
Garland’s nomination, saying the next president should fill the seat.
“With a Supreme Court that’s not fully staffed, it makes it
more likely that situations can arise across the country with different rulings
in different courts that aren’t resolved by the Supreme Court,” White House
Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Earlier this month, the court split, 4-4, in a narrow case
involving spousal liability and gender discrimination, the first such vote since
Scalia’s death.
The deadlock in the union case leaves in place mandatory
fees allowed by law in California and 22 other mostly Democratic states. Such
fees are prohibited in “right to work” states across the South and in much of
the Midwest.
Orange County teacher Rebecca Friedrichs and several others
had sued to overturn the mandatory fees, saying they objected being forced to
support the California Teachers Assn.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected her suit,
citing the 1977 Supreme Court ruling in Abood vs. Detroit Board of Education,
which had authorized these fair share fees in the first place. That case held
that workers could be required to share in the cost of collective bargaining,
but they did not have pay for a union’s political activities.
Before Scalia’s death, the court’s five more conservative
justices had served notice that they were ready to overturn Abood and declare
such forced fees as unconstitutional. The same five justices who in the
Citizens United case struck down campaign spending limits on free-speech
grounds seemed to view the union fees as a similar 1st Amendment violation.
Instead Tuesday, the justices issued a one-line statement
saying the 9th Circuit’s ruling is “affirmed by an equally divided court.”
Labor law scholars said unions would have been crippled if
nonmembers had no longer been required to pay anything to support the union.
“It would have been like a knife in the heart of the unions,” said Gary
Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in
Massachusetts.
The National Education Assn. -- the nation's largest union
with 3 million members -- hailed the outcome as a victory. Eric Heins,
president of the California teachers group, said “wealthy corporate special
interests” had brought the case to “make it harder for working families and the
middle class to come together, speak up and get ahead. Now it’s time for
senators to do their job and appoint a successor justice to the highest court
in our land.”
Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders agreed that the
deadlock “underscores the need to a confirm a Supreme Court nominee who will
protect the rights of American workers to collectively bargain for fair wages
and safe working conditions. The extreme right wing is just one conservative
Supreme Court justice away from dismantling the rights of public sector unions
to organize and collectively bargain on behalf of all workers.”
Conservatives said they saw no incentive to allow Obama to
appoint another left-leaning judge, which would give the court a liberal
majority for the first time in generations.
Curt Levey, executive director of the FreedomWorks
Foundation, said that the Supreme Court would shift “dramatically to the left
with the appointment of Merrick Garland or any other liberal, [and] become a
rubber stamp not just for the wishes of powerful labor unions, but also for
virtually the entire progressive agenda.”
Terry Pell, president of the Center for Individual Rights,
which helped launch Friedrichs’ lawsuit, said the group would try to raise the
issue again. “We believe this case is too significant to let a split decision
stand, and we will file a petition for rehearing with the Supreme Court,” he
said.
A labor policy expert who supported Friedrichs said
challengers should now to look to state legislatures to strike down the fees.
“With a divided court, thousands of public servants around
the nation must still financially assist a government union that they disagree
with,” said Trey Kovacs, a labor expert with the Competitive Enterprise
Institute. “Now it is up to state legislatures to provide public employees with
the freedom to choose whether or not to pay for union representation.”
In the Obamacare case, the justices said Tuesday that they
wanted to hear further arguments on whether insurance companies may directly
provide contraceptives to some women without the religious charities and
nonprofit organizations that employ them and object to birth control playing
any role.
Last week, the justices sounded evenly divided in a clash
between the Obama administration and Roman Catholic archbishops over the
contraceptive coverage that is now a required part of all health insurance
plans under Obamacare.
The administration had previously said that the Catholic
charities and other nonprofit religious groups need not pay for this coverage,
but that they must formally notify the government of their religious objections
so insurers can be ordered to provide the contraceptives.
But some Catholic leaders objected nonetheless and argued
that notifying the government would trigger the coverage and make them
“complicit in sin,” because they view some forms of the contraceptives as
abortion.
On Tuesday, the justices asked lawyers on both sides to
submit a new brief on whether insurance companies could be required by law to
provide the contraceptive coverage on their own so that the church-based
employer “would not required to submit any separate notice.”
The new briefs are due April 12. That suggests the justices
still hope to decide the case this term.
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