This is a Cato special podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. Today's decision in the case of Janice

V. AFS me at the Supreme Court affirms the rights of both workers and taxpayers not to support

political causes that they want nothing to do with. Trevor Burris, who worked on Cato's brief in the case,

discusses the opinion of the majority and the dissenters.

This is from the majority opinion in Janice v. AFSmee.

It was written by Samuel Alito.

He writes, compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable

violates that Cardinal Constitutional command and in most contexts any such effort would be universally

condemned. Suppose, for for example that the state of Illinois

required all residents to sign a document expressing support for a particular set of positions

on controversial public issues, say the platform of one of the

major political parties no one we trust would seriously argue that the

First Amendment permits this perhaps because such compulsion so plainly violates the Constitution, most of our

free speech cases have involved restrictions on what can be said rather than laws compelling

speech. But measures compelling speech are at least as

threatening. That's from the majority opinion in the Janus case that came out

today. What is your general takeaway on the majority opinion? This wasn't that big of a surprise,

but was there anything surprising in the majority opinion? No, it wasn't because also Alito wrote it and Alito has been writing he wrote two cases that led up to the Janus decision

one of them was Harris v Quinn and one of them was Knox v SE IU and those, actually in Harris v. Quinn, he goes on almost unnecessarily explaining that Abood has

never been fully justified and there's a lot of things wrongs with it.

And he actually, in this opinion, he he just says well let me refer to you to what I said in Harris if you want to know why Abood doesn't really stand the test of time and it is the correct decision for all the reasons he just said.

The way unions, public sector unions could get money was an aberration in American First Amendment law.

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