Whether it violates the First Amendment to appoint a labor union to represent and speak for public-sector employees who have declined to join the union

QUESTION PRESENTED Three times in recent years, this Court has recognized that schemes compelling public-sector employees to associate with labor unions impose a “significant impingement” on those employees’ First Amendment rights. Knox v. Service Employees, 567 U.S. 298, 310-11 (2012); Harris v. Quinn, 134 S. Ct. 2618, 2639 (2014); Janus v. AFSCME, 138 S. Ct. 2448, 2483 (2018). The most recent of those decisions, Janus, likewise recognized that a state’s appointment of a labor union to speak for its employees as their exclusive representative was “itself a significant impingement on associational freedoms that would not be tolerated in other contexts.” 138 S. Ct. at 2478. The lower courts, however, have refused to subject exclusive representation schemes to any degree of constitutional scrutiny, on the mistaken view that this Court approved such arrangements in Minnesota State Board for Community Colleges v. Knight, 465 U.S. 271 (1984). The question presented is therefore: Whether it violates the First Amendment to appoint a labor union to represent and speak for public-sector employees who have declined to join the union.