First, ask permission

Using union dues in politics

Published June 16, 2007 at midnight

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So, former Colorado Secretary of State Gigi Dennis may not have been the lawless partisan that her political enemies, and to some extent the state courts, made her out to be last year.

It is perfectly OK to require unions to get permission from workers before spending their dues on political activity, the U.S. Supreme Court said this week in a unanimous decision. Yet when Dennis ruled that unions obtain permission annually from every member before making donations to political campaigns from their "small-donor" committees, the outcry was such you'd have thought she'd raided Fort Knox. We agreed with critics that she acted without sufficient public debate, but we never doubted the basic good sense of her decision.

Nevertheless, the courts went against Dennis, with the state appeals court making the absurd argument that "(The secretary's rule) effectively denies the First Amendment rights of the majority of union members for the benefit of dissenting members." Memo to the court: The First Amendment protects an individual right to free speech, not the right of a majority to bully a minority into subsidizing speech it doesn't like.

In its opinion, the appeals court actually cited the Washington state court's opinion that has now been struck down. That case had to do with whether the teachers' union could spend workers' money on the union's political goals without getting their permission first.

The Washington case is not precisely on point for Colorado, since it involved a union spending funds from non-members forced to pay "agency fees." But it extends a long line of cases guaranteeing that workers cannot be required to give financial support to causes they oppose.

How states go about guaranteeing that right, however, is not up to courts to decide, Justice Antonio Scalia wrote.

That sentiment might have come directly from a friend-of-the-court brief prepared by the Colorado attorney general's office in November 2006, which was joined by five other states. It made the point that states have chosen different ways of addressing the tension between the sometimes conflicting goals of workers and unions. Had the Washington decision been upheld, the brief argued, many duly enacted state laws would been put at risk.

Another argument from the brief was that the Washington ruling turned prior U.S. Supreme Court decisions upside down. What the high court intended to be the minimal safeguards for workers' rights would become the maximum protection any state would be permitted to enact.

Scalia seemed to buy that argument, too.

Last week's ruling won't make much difference in Colorado, since this legislature isn't about to approve a bill lessening union influence in politics. Still, we welcome support for the principle that workers should be the ones to decide whether their dues go to support political causes.

"We believe there was an important public policy question at stake in this case, and that's what caused us to write an amicus brief," said Attorney General John Suthers. "No Coloradan . . . should be required to contribute to political issues or candidates without their consent."

Indeed not.

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