878
Opinion of the Court
Hudson, 475 U. S., at 306. And when pursuing the union's internal remedies, an objector may preserve the right to subsequent judicial relief without "indicat[ing] to the Union the specific expenditures to which he objects." Abood, 431 U. S., at 241 (emphasis in original). In stating that the "nonmember's 'burden' is simply the obligation to make his objection known," Hudson, 475 U. S., at 306, n. 16, however, we did not hold that a federal-court plaintiff can file a generally phrased complaint, then sit back and require the union to prove the "germaneness" of its expenditures without a clue as to "which of its thousands of expenditures" the objectors oppose. Reply Brief 4. Agency-fee challengers, like all other civil litigants, must make their objections known with the degree of specificity appropriate at each stage of litigation their case reaches: motion to dismiss; motion for summary judgment; pretrial conference.
The very purpose of Hudson's notice requirement is to provide employees sufficient information to enable them to identify the expenditures that, in their view, the union has improperly classified as germane. See 475 U. S., at 306-307. With the Hudson notice, plus any additional information developed through reasonable discovery, an objector can be expected to point to the expenditures or classes of expenditures he or she finds questionable. Although the union must establish that those expenditures were in fact germane, the shifted burden of proof provides no warrant for blocking dissenting employees from bringing their claims in federal court in the first instance, if that is their preference. The answer to ALPA's efficiency concern lies in conscientious management of the pretrial process to guard against abuse, not in a judicially imposed exhaustion requirement.
Moreover, the degree to which an exhaustion requirement would reduce the burden on the courts is uncertain. To the extent that the arbitrator does not sustain an objection to the union's fee calculation, exhaustion would require the ob-
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