A Pamela Harris v. Pat Quinn Perspective

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix sent an e-mail out this weekend providing an interesting perspective regarding the Foundations’ Harris v. Quinn Supreme Court Case that I wanted to share with you here.

From Mark Mix:

The Supreme Court of the United States receives 10,000 petitions for a writ of certiorari every year.

In a given year, the High Court will only hear oral argument in 70 or 80 cases.

When the month of June started, there were still over 20 cases from the 2013-2014 term to be decided. At the beginning of this past week, there were ten left. After Wednesday, just four remained.

And now there are two.

Tradition holds that the Supreme Court saves the most important decisions for the end of the term.

It’s a privilege for your National Right to Work Foundation to find itself at the very tip of the spear on fighting for one of the most vital rights in our constitutional republic.

Foundation staff attorneys have asked the nine Supreme Court Justices to consider whether government-sector forced unionism is compatible with the First Amendment.

I don’t dare predict how the Court will rule on Monday, but I am sure of two things.

We wouldn’t have reached the top of the legal summit 17 times, including twice this term, without the dedicated support of concerned citizens like you.

This odyssey has been years in the making, starting with disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s Executive Order in 2003 aimed at corralling personal care providers into forced-unionism ranks.

With free legal aid from Foundation staff attorneys, Pam Harris and other in-home care providers launched their class-action lawsuit in 2010.

Foundation attorneys asked the Supreme Court to hear the case in November 2011. It took nearly two years to get an answer.

Now we’re just hours away from a potentially groundbreaking decision.

But regardless of how the Court rules, the other thing I’m sure of is the moral rightness of our cause.

It’s simple: No worker should be required to join or pay dues or fees to a labor organization just to get or keep a job.

You can see the rightness of our cause just by looking at what the other side is saying about the possible outcome of the case. Union bosses and their apologists are apoplectic:

“This is an attempted kill shot aimed at public-sector unions,” said one union lawyer.

The Court could “cripple union organizing and collective bargaining,” an operative of the Big Labor-funded Economic Policy Institute lamented.

A Foundation-won victory would “hinder dramatically the ability of unions to participate as vibrant political actors,” said another union lawyer.

What does it say about Organized Labor that union bosses believe that making financial support of their organizations voluntary — like every other private association in America — would make them so ineffective?

Make no mistake, compulsory unionism is the engine that drives the corruption of our politics.

As Thomas Jefferson eloquently wrote, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”

That is what we are fighting.

No matter how the Court rules on Monday, we will press on to fight for worker freedom.

If we win, we won’t rest on our laurels. After all, Supreme Court precedents don’t enforce themselves.

Either way, we will keep fighting in our more than 200 active cases making their way through the legal system.

The battle for worker freedom is long and hard.

And the fact is, we wouldn’t be able to wage these fights without the support of concerned Americans like you.

We look forward to the day when no American is forced to pay tribute to an unwanted union.

Thank you for enabling us to take the fight this far.

Sincerely,

 

Mark Mix

[Emphasis added]