Supreme Court Stops Unions Bosses in Their Tracks

The Roberts Court, April 23, 2021
Seated from left to right: Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor Standing from left to right: Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Photograph by Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court has issued a stinging rebuke to union bosses supported by the State of California, which passed a law allowing them to access farmers’ land in order to unionize workers. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority, saying “the access regulation is not germane to any benefit provided to agricultural employers or any risk posed to the public…The access regulation grants labor organizations a right to invade the growers’ property. It therefore constitutes a per se physical taking.”

The court’s radical progressive justices, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonya Sotomayor, dissented. In essence, they argued that allowing non-government union employees onto private property was the same as allowing government employees like inspectors. How could you compare union bosses intent on expanding their dues-paying membership to FDA inspectors looking for food violations? The incentive structures don’t match at all. Carlos Garcia reports for The Blaze:

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stinging defeat for unions on Wednesday in a decision that struck down in part a California law allowing unions access to private property of companies they wanted to unionize.

The court ruled 6 to 3 to knock down the union law in favor of the business owners’ private property rights.

“The upshot of this line of precedent is that government-authorized invasions of property — whether by plane, boat, cable, or beachcomber — are physical takings requiring just compensation,” said Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority decision.

The “right of access” law passed in California allowed farmworker unions to gain access to the private property of farm owners in order to help unionize their workers.

The three liberal justices argued in their dissent that the law was a regulation did not constitute taking away anyone’s private property.