Judge Defends Public Union’s Power to Represent Nonmembers (1)

A Minnesota federal judge rejected a conservative advocacy group’s bid to prevent a union from representing workers who aren’t members of that union, delivering an early setback to a legal campaign attacking a cornerstone of collective bargaining.

The Buckeye Institute is supporting Kathleen Uradnik, a political science professor at St. Cloud State University, in her First Amendment lawsuit challenging the Inter Faculty Organization’s right to represent her and other nonmembers. The group has filed the same type of lawsuit on behalf of public workers in Ohio and Maine, and there’s matching litigation in California, Maryland, and Alaska.

But the U.S. ...