With the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death Saturday, the court’s ideologically conservative 5-4 majority is no more. One big case this affects is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which the conservative ideological majority on the court was prepared to use to bankrupt public-employee unions. Now they can’t do that.

The Friedrichs case involves a lawsuit from anti-union groups that want to stop public-employee unions from collecting dues from non-members, even though they are required by law to provide expensive services. A unanimous 1977 ruling by the Supreme Court, in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, had said that unions can collect dues from nonmembers for “collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment purposes” while those nonmembers are free to choose whether to also pay into union funds used for political purposes. The conservative, anti-union ideologues on this court, which included Scalia, went against precedent and “settled law” in agreeing to hear this case at all.

The post” Why You Should Pay Attention To The ‘Friedrichs’ Supreme Court Case explains”:

The Supreme Court has once again decided to reconsider “settled law.” This time it is a case involving the rights of public-employee unions to charge employees a fee for the services the unions are required by law to provide to all employees – even those who are not members of the union. The goal is to bankrupt the unions by denying them the funds necessary to perform the required services.

The argument is that since unions protect working people’s pay and rights, paying fees for union services therefore violates the “free speech” of those who support concentrated wealth and power.

The purpose of keeping unions from collecting dues while requiring them to provide services was clearly to bankrupt the unions. The post “Supreme Court Appears Ready To Bankrupt Public-Employee Unions” looked at the funding behind the case — and behind getting the anti-union ideologues onto the court:

The names Koch, Bradley, Scaife, Olin, Coors, Walton and the others are well known to people who study the massive amount of money behind the so-called “conservative movement” that has helped drive anti-democracy efforts and the resulting inequality in the decades since the 1970s. This small band of wealthy foundations and billionaires are among the same conservative donors who funded the efforts to place the current corporate-conservative majority on the court, and many of the politicians who voted to put them there.

What Now?

Justice Scalia died before the Court decided the Friedrichs case. The court is now evenly divided, with four justices who almost always rule on the side of big corporations and billionaires against unions, environmentalists, consumer groups and all other interests the protect the non-wealthy public in general. The other four justices usually consider the constitutionality, law and merits of the cases before them.

In the Friedrichs case, there is little doubt that the court will now tie 4-4 because of the unanimous Abood precedent. The rules of the legal system say a tie in the Supreme Court means that the ruling of the lower court that advanced the case up to the Supreme Court stays in effect.

In the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, that lower court is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. That court ruled that the unanimous 1977 Supreme Court ruling in Abood is still settled law and applies, so the California Teachers Association could continue to collect dues from nonmembers.

Put another way, Scalia’s death likely means that public-employee unions will not be forced into bankruptcy by the corporate/billionaire-funded “movement” ideologues on the Court.

This blog originally appeared at OurFuture.org on February 16 2016. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Dave Johnson has more than 20 years of technology industry experience. His earlier career included technical positions, including video game design at Atari and Imagic. He was a pioneer in design and development of productivity and educational applications of personal computers. More recently he helped co-found a company developing desktop systems to validate carbon trading in the U.S.