Public-sector unions nationwide survived a serious threat when the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked on March 29 over a challenge by conservatives to the fair-share fees that public-sector unions collect from workers who don’t become members.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said the ruling in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association was a reprieve for the labor movement that demonstrated the critical importance of the Supreme Court. “The corporate interests that created and backed the Friedrichs case will continue their efforts to undermine unions, working people and the country’s middle class,” he said. “We have to do all we can to ensure that the next Supreme Court justice does not tilt the court in their direction.”

The lawsuit was specially crafted to debilitate public-sector unions by sabotaging their funding structure. It was instigated by the Center for Individual Rights, a legal advocacy group financed by the Koch brothers and conservative foundations. The center, working with the law firm it engaged, cold-called California teachers until it found 10 teachers willing to front the challenge as plaintiffs. Seeking to overturn 39 years of legal precedent, lawyers for the center argued that the union’s collection of fair-share fees violated non-members’ First Amendment free-speech rights.

To speed the lawsuit’s passage to the high court, the center asked the lower courts at each step to apply the existing case law and rule against it. The center was spurred by Justice Samuel Alito’s signal in a prior decision that the Supreme Court was ready to overturn the 1977 precedent that upheld the right of government employers and public-sector unions to agree to an arrangement in which the workers in the bargaining union are required to pay their union what are known as agency fees. It usually takes a case seven years to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, but Friedrichs arrived there in a year and a half with essentially no case record.

In oral arguments in January, Justice Antonin Scalia equated public-sector collective bargaining — including for pay and benefits — with political speech, prompting some court-watchers to speculate that the high court appeared poised to rule 5-4 against the unions. But Scalia’s death in February ended the conservative majority on the high court. In issuing a 4-4 ruling in March, the court simply stated that the 1977 precedent “is affirmed by an equally divided court.”

The arena of battle has now shifted to the decision over who will succeed Scalia on the Supreme Court. President Obama on March 16 nominated Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland, a highly regarded jurist, to the court, but Senate Republicans, trying to delay any appointment until after the November election, have refused to hold hearings or a vote on Garland.

“If the Republicans continue to stonewall, the next president will make the appointment,” Mulgrew said in an email message to members. “That’s why we must do everything in our power to ensure a Democrat wins the White House in November.”

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