Below is a link to an article shared by Lee Alder and courtesy of The Intercept.com Lee offers a "brief introduction" with a link to the article below.
In the 90’s in an important case that had issues similar to Janus, I characterized Justice Scalia’s position thusly:
“One of those cases, Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Association (1991), which dealt with nonmember higher- education employees, included a key economic observation from one of the potential swing votes in Friedrichs, Justice Antonin Scalia. He noted in his concurring opinion that when a state government gives nonmembers a “legal entitlement,” such as a union’s duty to represent them as if they were members, the state may “compel” the members “to pay the cost.” Justice Scalia was not shy about how to resolve the tension between full dues-paying members of the union and nonmembers who received the same benefits. He characterized the latter as “free riders whom the law requires the union to carry—indeed, requires the union to go out of its way to benefit, even at the expense of its other interests.”
At the Friedrichs hearing, just before Scalia died, leaving the Court at 4-4, and no overruling of Abood, the precedent that allows us to collect dues from agency fee pay folks. Scalia appeared to change , and everyone has thought Gorsuch’s appointment to the Court means that Janus is a done deal.
Not so fast, says this article… Two Libertarian scholars, highly respected, wrote that forcing agency fee folks to pay is not an unusual thing for a government to do to a citizen and does not violate the first amendment. Another Libertarian Harvard scholar, very well respected on the Right, agrees with these two scholars.
If either Gorsuch or Justice Kennedy agreed with these influential writers, and there is reason to believe they will consider this argument more than any liberal or trade unionist argument or brief, then Janus would go our way.
Please read this very well written article carefully and you will discover the most hope we have seen since the US Supreme Court granted review in this case. Thank you…lee adler
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/02/supreme-court-union-dues-agency-fees/;