AUSTIN—Today, the Texas Public Policy Foundation published the policy perspective, Vindicating Texans’ Free Speech Rights Under Janus.

“Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court found that elected officials infringe on public employees’ First Amendment rights when they force them as a job condition to allow a third party—a labor union—to speak for them on workplace matters and infringe on them again when they force public employees to bankroll a union they don’t want,” said Stanley Greer, senior fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “But the Court prohibited only forced financial support for government unions. To ensure public servants’ constitutional rights of free speech and free association are fully protected, lawmakers in states, including Texas, that currently authorize so-called union ‘exclusivity’ in some or all government workplaces need to stop doing so.”

Key Points:

  • Texas citizens can take pride in the fact that the laws of their state prohibited compulsory union financial support in the private and public sectors for decades before Janus.
  • But the loopholes in Texas’ general ban on collectivist unionism in government and the state’s lack of a clear statutory ban on the use of taxpayer funds to cover union operating costs continue to undermine the free-speech rights of public workers and taxpayers.
  • Post-Janus, these special privileges for government union chiefs should not be tolerated in Texas or anywhere else in the U.S.

To read the perspective in full, please visit:

https://www.texaspolicy.com/vindicating-texans-free-speech-rights-under-janus/