Th Abood precedent (despite fierce criticism from the right) was reaffirmed by the court many times; but in 2011, Alito, in an opinion called Knox v. Service Employees International Union, proclaimed that Abood had been wrongly decided. In the public employee context, he argued, even bread-and-butter union issues (wages, health benefits, pensions, work rules) are “political” issues, and thus any payment of fees was “compelled speech.”

Picking up on his cue, such groups as the National Right to Work Foundation have begun a quest to overturn Abood. They came close with Friedrichs; Janus, which will be argued on February 26, poses the identical question. Most of the briefing on the union side has argued that Abood struck the right balance—that is, that the advantage to the state and to workers of effective collective bargaining outweighs what Abood called the incidental “an impact upon [objectors’] interests,” as long as the union rebated that part of the fees used for purposes like “legislative lobbying and in support of political candidates.”

Volokh and Baude are bolder. They argue that the agency fees paid by objectors simply do not implicate their First Amendment rights at all.  Yes, they argue, Abood was wrong; but the error was “not in how it applied the new First Amendment objection [to the fees] it recognized. Rather, Abood erred by recognizing that objection in the first place.” Agency fees paid to a union, even when required by the government, are simply a requirement that individuals pay for speech activities designated by the government. And, they argue, “[c]ompelled subsidies of others’ speech happens all the time, and are not generally viewed as burdening any First Amendment interest.”

Read more at The Atlantic