Friedrichs teachers ask Supreme Court for rehearing

The plaintiffs in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association have requested that the Supreme Court grant them a new hearing, saying the case's issue, the constitutionality of mandatory union fees for workers in public-sector unions, was too important to leave unresolved after a divided court failed to reach a verdict late last month.
"To leave the questions presented unresolved would needlessly prolong the prevailing uncertainty on issues that recur constantly and that affect millions of public employees in the more than 20 states that allow agency fees. Moreover, the schemes at issue implicate hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to organizations that spend those dollars advocating on matters of clear public concern," the 11 plaintiffs argued in a Friday petition.
The high-profile case involved whether the court should overturn a 1977 precedent called Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that said that government entities could enter into labor contracts that require their workers to have to join a union or pay it a regular fee, called an "agency fee." The plaintiffs in Friedrichs argued that violated dissenting workers' rights.
The court's oral arguments in January indicated there may have been a majority to overturn Abood, which would have been a major blow to public-sector unions by depriving them a major revenue source. That apparently changed when Antonin Scalia, the court's leading conservative, suddenly died in February.