TREND Spring/Summer 2018 | Page 5

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR Never a Wrong Time to Do the Right Thing The United States Supreme Court has been busy this week. I have only been focused on the Janus Case. The justices ruled 5-4 to prohibit unions from collecting fees in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31. The justices also ruled that workers must affirmatively opt into the union before fees can be taken out of their paychecks. It will effectively break the cycle where government unions can collect compulsory fees from government workers and then use it to help elect pro-union politicians to achieve and maintain political power — who then empower and enrich the government employee unions. Think about this for a minute, the unions were arguing in this case: “that government has a duty to financially prop up a private enterprise.” In what universe the Supreme Court Justices must have thought. The legal rationale was questionable at best. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in the majority opinion and addressed that directly: “It is hard to estimate how many