486
Souter, J., dissenting
bargaining functions]." Id., at 528-529 (plurality opinion). The advertising campaigns here suffer from the same defect as the public relations effort to stimulate demand for the teachers' product: a local union can negotiate a particular contract for the benefit of a shop's whole labor force without globally espousing the virtues of teachers, and (in the absence of further explanation) produce markets can be directly regulated in the interest of stability and growth without espousing the virtues of fruit. They were, indeed, for a quarter century, and still are under the many agricultural marketing orders that authorize no advertising schemes. See infra, at 494-499. In each instance, the challenged burden on dissenters' First Amendment rights is substantially greater than anything inherent in regulation of the commercial transactions. Thus, the Abood line does not permit this program merely because it is germane to the marketing orders.4
4 The Court purports to find support for its more permissive reading of the Abood "germaneness test" in a separate holding of Lehnert allowing mandatory charges for portions of the union's internal newsletter, the Teachers' Voice, that concerned " 'teaching and education generally, professional development, unemployment, job opportunities, award programs . . . , and other miscellaneous matters.' " Ante, at 473 (quoting Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Assn., 500 U. S. 507, 529 (1991)). But the Lehnert Court noted that these communications, though plainly speech, were not "public in nature," ibid.; the Teachers' Voice was the union's means of communicating with its members, not the public at large, see Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Assn.-MEA-NEA, 643 F. Supp. 1306, 1328 (WD Mich. 1986), aff'd, 881 F. 2d 1388 (CA6 1989), aff'd in part and rev'd in part on other grounds, 500 U. S. 507 (1991). In upholding charges for this type of internal communication, Lehnert simply followed our earlier decision in Ellis v. Railway Clerks, 466 U. S. 435 (1984), in which we reasoned that "[t]he union must have a channel for communicating with the employees, including the objecting ones, about its activities. [The union surely may] charge objecting employees for reporting to them about those activities it can charge them for doing." Id., at 450-451. In other words, this type of internal communication about chargeable activities, unlike the public advertising campaign struck down in Lehnert, was necessary to the union's role as collective-bargaining agent and imposed no greater burden on the em-
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