The Hill: California workers have constitutional rights—even if unions think they don’t matter

Last summer, the Supreme Court held in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Local 31 that public employees cannot be forced to pay agency fees. Under the First Amendment, workers have a choice: join the union or don’t; pay union dues or don’t. 

Most public workers don’t know they have this choice, and the unions have every financial incentive to keep that information secret. But what about the employers? Can’t state agencies inform their workers that they have a constitutional right to work without union membership? Not in California.

In their op-ed for The Hill, PLF’s Deborah La Fetra and Jeffrey Schwab of the Liberty Justice Center tell us about the state’s “Gag Rule” statutes enacted on the day Janus was decided that aim to keep public workers ignorant of their constitutional rights.

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The First Amendment protects the emoji house and the “Starry Night” house

A few months ago, Manhattan Beach resident Kathryn Kidd hired a local artist to paint her house in a bright pink color with a pair of cheeky emoji faces. While Kidd enjoys the house, her neighbors have made it clear that they do not, and they’re trying to force the city to take action against her.

The art may be different, but the story is nearly the same as that of Nancy Nemhauser and Lubek Jastrzebski, whose colorful homage to Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night—painted on their Florida home—drew punitive action by local government. 

Nancy and Lubek fought back with PLF—and won. And, as Jeremy Talcott explains, their total victory for the First Amendment should send a message to Manhattan Beach city council: Government doesn’t get to decide what art is good or bad.

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The confusing world of government censorship

The First Amendment protects our freedom of speech for one reason: Free speech is necessary to sustain free thought and free action. It may seem obvious, but our ability to speak truth to power, point out injustices in the system, and engage with ideas is critical to our freedoms. Censorship threatens all that, but unfortunately—as in so many tumultuous eras in our country’s history—censorship is back in vogue.  

And whether it’s college campuses or the DMV, Phillip Bader points out that even offensive speech deserves protection from government speech police. Also, watch PLF’s new video about the dirty minds of the California DMV and their absurd attempts to censor personalized license plates they deem “offensive.” 

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