Agency Fees and the First Amendment

In the last five years, the United States Supreme Court has decided three cases involving agency fees — the mandatory payments that certain employees are required to make to unions. The Court will hear a fourth case this Term.

All of these cases raise the question of whether agency fee agreements in the public sector are constitutional under the First Amendment. In a case argued in October Term 2015, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Ass’n, the Court appeared poised to hold in the negative and to decide that agency fees amount to compelled speech and association.