Besieged American Unions Face New Conservative Legal War

On the morning of June 27, anti-union advocates scored a victory they’d sought for decades: A groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court ruling siding with an Illinois government employee, Mark Janus, who claimed a First Amendment right not to pay fees to the union that represented him.

Within hours after the high court’s Republican majority applied Janus’s argument to all government workers, a conservative advocacy group called the Buckeye Institute sued on behalf of an Ohio teacher named Jade Thompson. Not a union member, Thompson argued she should have the right to refuse union representation entirely.

Photographer: Charles Mostoller/Bloomberg

Building on the Janus case—which ...