Posts tagged Supreme Court

    Op-ed: How Teachers Can Dismantle the Teachers’ Unions

    August 12, 2025 // Conservative and independent teachers, who make up the other 59 percent of the profession, are forced to fund their political opponents while union bosses like Weingarten, who pocketed over $600,000 in 2024, and Pringle, an at-large Democratic National Committee member raking in over half a million dollars annually, live lavishly. These union elites are an embarrassment to teachers who just want to teach reading, writing, and math.

    Lower courts ignore Supreme Court precedent to force union payments

    August 2, 2025 // The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to answer that question. In an amicus brief filed July 24, the two organizations ask the Court to reaffirm and enforce the constitutional standard it set in the 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision: that no money may be taken from a public employee’s paycheck for a union without the employee’s clear and affirmative consent. The brief supports two public workers who are respectively suing the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees as well as the International Union of Operating Engineers. Marcus Todd and Terry Klee

    New Game Plan: White House and Congress Move to Clarify Student Athlete Unionization Rights

    July 31, 2025 // The SCORE bill’s ban is broad. Its key provision says, in part: “no individual may be considered an employee of an institution, a conference, or an interstate intercollegiate athletic association based on the participation of such individual on a varsity sports team or in an intercollegiate athletic competition as a student athlete.” In addition, the bill blocks states from enforcing any law that “governs or regulates the compensation, payment, benefits, employment status, or eligibility of a student athlete (including a prospective student athlete) with respect to participation in intercollegiate athletics.” It specifically blocks any state law that “relates to the right of a student athlete to receive compensation or other payments or benefits directly or indirectly from any institution, associated entity or individual, conference, or interstate intercollegiate athletic association.”

    Commentary: Ivy Leaguers Aren’t Auto Workers

    July 21, 2025 // In general, NLRB decisions are fake law made by fake judges who have to interpret a poorly written statute from 90 years ago that is based on assumptions about industrial organization that no longer obtain in the United States. But the NLRB remains powerful nonetheless, and its decisions matter. That’s why Russell Burgett, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, which is private, is asking the NLRB to overturn the 2016 Columbia ruling. He isn’t a member of the Cornell graduate students’ union, a UE affiliate, and he said in charges filed with the NLRB on Monday that his choice not to join makes it harder for him to complete his education.

    President Trump Taps Two GOP Nominees for NLRB, But Uncertainty Remains

    July 21, 2025 // President Trump nominated Scott Mayer (chief labor counsel at Boeing Co.) and James Murphy (former NLRB attorney) to fill two vacant Republican seats on the NLRB, potentially restoring the Board’s ability to issue decisions. Mayer’s work experience demonstrates a strong management background, having worked at InterContinental Hotels Group, MGM Resorts International, Aramark, and several law firms prior to his current role at Boeing. Meanwhile, Murphy was selected by Kaplan to serve as his chief counsel in 2017 and has spent his career at the Board, having served as staff counsel or supervisor on the staffs of dozens of Board members.

    The Roadmap To Modernizing Federal Labor Laws: Matt Kittle, F. Vincent Vernuccio

    July 20, 2025 // That's one of the main things that we want to see at I4AW. Is workers having a choice in a voice, having. The ability to say who they want to be represented by, how they want their money spent, and how they want to work. And I know we talked about it briefly with the ERA, but the ability for an independent contractor to work for themselves, not be considered an employee, small business owner, to own a franchise, all those things are core to what the flexibility and the entrepreneurship of the modern worker, and those are the concepts that are embraced, you know, not just on the union end of the Employee Rights Act, but on the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and pro worker end of the ERA.

    San Fernando Valley Kaiser Permanente Nurse Hits UNAC Union With Federal Charges for Forcing Nurses to Fund Union Politics

    July 19, 2025 // Sarah Warthemann, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente’s branch in Woodland Hills, has just filed federal charges against the United Nurses Association of California (UNAC) union at her workplace. She maintains that UNAC officials threatened that she would lose her job if she did not formally join the union, and have ignored her attempt to exercise her legal right to opt out of paying for union political expenses. Warthemann filed her charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

    Trump Names NLRB Nominees, Providing Path to Functioning Quorum

    July 17, 2025 // The administration Thursday nominated Scott Mayer, chief labor counsel at the Boeing Co., and James Murphy, a former career NLRB lawyer, to fill the two open Republican board seats. The NLRB has been unable to issue decisions for most of Trump’s second term because his January firing of Democratic member Gwynne Wilcox dropped the board below the three-member minimum necessary for a quorum. The US Supreme Court blocked a federal judge’s order to reinstate Wilcox as litigation over her termination proceeds. If Trump’s nominees sail through the Senate approval process, they would join Chair Marvin Kaplan to form a three-member GOP majority on the board, with David Prouty continuing to serve as the sole Democratic member.

    Op-ed: She looked like a pro-worker Trump cabinet appointee. But now she’s gutting the Labor Department

    July 17, 2025 // The standards on the chopping block include those issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a unit of the Labor Department, that were developed after years of effort. OSHA standards, Reindel told me, take an average of seven years — and as long as 20 years — to draft. “This is an onslaught on people’s basic protections at work.”