In Harris v. Quinn, a divided U.S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment’s free speech and free association clauses prohibited an Illinois labor union from collecting agency fees from non-unionized in-home personal care assistants. To reach this holding, the Court concluded that its landmark case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education was not applicable to Harris and applied only to cases that involved employees employed solely by the state.
This Note begins with a brief history of the constitutionality of collective bargaining agency fees in the United States. It then addresses the key facts of Harris and outlines the arguments made in the majority and dissenting opinions. In analyzing the Court’s holdings in Harris, this Note deduces that: (1) Abood should have been controlling, and that the Harris Court improperly distinguished Abood; (2) the majority’s conclusion would have been appropriate in the absence of Abood; (3) instead of distinguishing Abood, the Court should have overturned it as unconstitutional and relied instead on Pickering v. Board of Education; and (4) overturning Abood would not unduly or unjustifiably aggravate existing agency shop case law. Finally, this Note concludes that the Court’s decision in Harris was a product of a result-oriented, policy-driven judiciary, and that the decision not to overturn Abood serves to further crystalize Abood’s unconstitutional holding in common law.