With the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings underway, the unions are very jumpy.  Did you know that the U.S. Supreme Court is there to protect the little guy and minorities, uphold women’s rights, and destroy school choice? That’s according to the make-it-up-as-you-go-along left, including the teachers unions. In reality, the job of a SCOTUS...

Sacramento The dust still is clearing from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus decision, which declared that government employees are no longer required to pay union dues even for collective-bargaining purposes. Virtually everyone – from conservative reformers to union activists – agrees that the decision was momentous. But recent predictions about its real-world import vary widely,...

Santa Ana Unified’s Monte Vista Elementary: Everybody graduates, only 15% read at grade level. (Source: California School Acountability Report Card) On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the 40-year practice of requiring public employees to join a union. But a day later, union leaders in California’s sixth-largest school district were hard at work – blocking...

Sacramento The rhetoric from union organizers has been expectedly overheated regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s coming review of the Janus v. AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) case that challenges mandatory dues payments to public-sector unions. Court watchers from the left and right expect the conservative-leaning majority to toss out the practice...

Sacramento The nation’s public-sector unions have all but thrown in the towel on the notion of mandatory dues, yet various legal theorists and organizations have submitted briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court defending the right of unions to arm-twist dues from those who don’t agree with the union’s agenda. After reading their arguments, it’s clear...

Sacramento On first blush, the latest effort by Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislators to give public-employee unions access to public agencies to hold “orientation” seminars with new hires is an unfair special privilege not normally provided to private groups. It’s even more disturbing that the legislation authorizing such access is being rammed through the...

For Immediate Release January 19, 2017 California Policy Center Will Swaim, will@calpolicycenter.org (949) 274-1911 In a case that will cheer education reformers, four Pennsylvania teachers today sued their unions, school districts and district officials for making union membership a condition of their employment. The suit – and the likely appointment of a reform-friendly Supreme Court...

In a case that will cheer education reformers, four Pennsylvania teachers today sued their unions, school districts and district officials for making union membership a condition of their employment. “Teaching is my calling, but I fundamentally disagree with many teachers’ union stances on personnel and political issues,” said lead plaintiff Gregory J. Hartnett, an art...

An open letter to the idealistic teacher in Chicago who may have defied the teachers union by not striking on April 1st. In a recent newspaper article you said you were “morally and ethically” against the Chicago Teachers Union one-day strike (or “Day of Tantrum,” according to a Chicago Tribune op-ed) last Friday and that...

Positioning themselves as strict Constitutionalists, teacher union leaders cry foul over a precedent that the unions helped create. In the wake of Antonin Scalia’s untimely passing, two national teacher union leaders are in a self-righteous snit because the Republican-led Senate is remaining firm in its conviction to hold off consideration of a new Supreme Court...