Twenty-eight states have passed right-to-work legislation, and the latest union legal pushback has been unintentionally revealing.
Organized labor has argued that a portion of workers' paychecks really belongs to them. That is, by allowing wage-earners to withhold dues money for representation the workers don't want, states are actually “taking” union property “without just compensation” in violation of the Fifth Amendment. In the last week, two more courts have struck down this argument.
In a 3-2 ruling Friday, the West Virginia Supreme Court overturned a circuit court's preliminary injunction against the state's 2016 right-to-work legislation. In his concurring opinion, Chief Justice Allen Loughry slammed the union arguments as “fatally unsupported and lacking in merit” and said the lower court's actions were “not merely imprudent, but profoundly legally incorrect.”
On Tuesday, Wisconsin's District Three Court of Appeals upheld the state's 2015 right-to-work law, overturning a 2016 Dane County Circuit Court ruling. “Unions have no constitutional entitlement to the fees of non-member employees,” wrote Judge Mark Seidl.
Union political power has long been bought from compulsory dues. But in state after state, workers have elected lawmakers willing to stop labor's efforts to transform its political agenda into sanctioned theft. The courts are right to reject Big Labor's “takings” claim.
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