Red velvet drapes hang at the back of the courtroom at the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)With a conservative majority back in place, the Supreme Court on Thursday announced it will once again hear a challenge to the required payment of fees to public-employee unions, an important but controversial tool for the American labor movement. The case involves only public-employee unions — not private workers — but those unions are the strongest segment of an organized labor movement that is increasingly tied to the Democratic Party. At the same time, Republican governors across the nation have become embroiled in high-profile battles with the public-employee unions in their states. Challengers are directly asking the court to overturn a 1977 decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, that favored the unions. That ruling said that states could allow public-employee unions to collect fees from nonmembers to cover the costs of workplace negotiations but not to cover the union’s political activities.

Source: Washington Post September 28, 2017 14:47 UTC