A group of Jewish professors in New York City are being forced to submit themselves to formal representation by a union that openly denounces Israel as “racist” and opposes that country’s efforts to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists.
New York’s labor laws require that the professors accept the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY (PSC) as their representative in labor negotiations—in violation of their First Amendment freedom of association. The professors at the City University of New York (CUNY) are suing, and last week the Goldwater Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the professors in their fight against this blatant injustice and urging the high court to intervene.
The government should not be able to force you to join a club or a political party—and certainly not one that opposes the political or religious values that matter most to you. As the professors’ suit explains, the First Amendment protects them from this “compelled association.” If people have the right to freely associate, they must also have the right to disassociate, or cut ties with, organizations they no longer want to be a part of.
Of course, special interest groups like unions benefit from the power to speak for large numbers of people, which is why they fight tooth and nail to keep workers from being able to speak for themselves. That’s called “exclusive representation,” and it allows unions to keep out competition: government gives them the special privilege that only they may negotiate employment contracts on workers’ behalf, so workers can’t form competing groups or even represent themselves.
That’s bad enough. But unions go far beyond negotiating labor contracts. They also take public positions on a wide variety of political issues—everything from shutting down schools during the pandemic to opposing the right of Israelis to defend themselves against terrorist attacks. In 2021, the PSC passed a resolution labeling Israel an “illegal” “colonial state” and accusing it of “apartheid.” More recently, the union has defended the protestors who occupied the Columbia University campus, disrupting school business and intimidating Jewish students and faculty. Unsurprisingly, the professors vehemently disagree with those views and consider them anti-Semitic. It’s little wonder that Jewish professors would prefer to have nothing to do with such a union.
And that’s their right under the First Amendment. As we’ve argued in previous cases, the Constitution protects not just the right to free speech, but the right to join—or to refuse to join—any group. To penalize workers for quitting a union, by effectively depriving them of employment opportunities as a consequence, is to punish people for exercising their right to self-expression. Yet that’s just what the New York law does.
The Supreme Court said in 2018 that exclusive representation “substantially restricts the rights of individual employees.” But it left open the question of whether it is unconstitutional, and it so far has not revisited the issue. It’s time for the court to address the matter.
You can read our Supreme Court brief here and read more about our work to protect employees from being trapped in public-sector unions here.
Parker Jackson is a Staff Attorney at the Goldwater Institute. Timothy Sandefur is the Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute.
