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Full-Text Articles in Law
Redefining Workplace Speech After Janus, Theo A. Lesczynski
Redefining Workplace Speech After Janus, Theo A. Lesczynski
Northwestern University Law Review
We have a First Amendment right to criticize the government. But this freedom does not translate into a right to criticize one’s boss even if, as for millions of Americans, one’s boss happens to be a government employer. Public employee speech doctrine has long established wide latitude for public employers to supervise their workers. Employees must show at the threshold that their speech was on a matter of public concern and not an internal workplace matter. The Supreme Court’s pronouncements over the last decade in a related doctrinal area, however, have unsettled the line demarcating workplace speech. In its agency …
Reconciling Agency Fee Doctrine, The First Amendment, And The Modern Public Sector Union, Courtlyn G. Roser-Jones
Reconciling Agency Fee Doctrine, The First Amendment, And The Modern Public Sector Union, Courtlyn G. Roser-Jones
Northwestern University Law Review
Few institutions have done more to improve working conditions for the middle class than labor unions. Their efforts, of course, cost money. To fund union activities, thousands of collective bargaining agreements across the nation have long included provisions permitting employers to require employees to pay “fair share” or “agency” fees. In public unions—when the employer is the government—this arrangement creates tension between two important values: the First Amendment’s protection against compelled expression and the collective benefits of worker representation. When confronted with this tension forty years ago in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the Supreme Court struck an …