News

Second Circuit Rejects Challenges to Agency Fee

June 2010

Largely affirming a judgment entered by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, the Second Circuit held that public-employee unions may lawfully charge objecting nonmembers for expenditures the union incurs in attempting to organize nonunion workplaces that compete with the nonmembers’ public-sector jobs. 

The court also upheld the union’s use of a “local presumption” in calculating and explaining the agency fee charged for expenditures by the union’s local affiliates.  In addition, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s order refusing to appoint attorneys from the National Right to Work Foundation as counsel for a class of public employees on the ground that the Foundation’s objectives were in conflict with the interests of the class that its attorneys sought to represent.  Scheffer v. Civil Service Employees Ass’n, 610 F.3d 782 (2d Cir. 2010).