Public-Sector Unions Avoid Top Court Battle Over Nonmembers

The U.S. Supreme Court won’t weigh a University of Maine professor’s constitutional challenge to a faculty union serving as his bargaining representative even though he’s not a member of the union, preserving a fundamental part of labor-management relations in the public sector.

The justices let stand the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s decision tossing economics professor Jonathan Reisman’s lawsuit against the Associated Faculties of the Universities of Maine and the state of Maine. The Buckeye Institute, a conservative advocacy group based in Ohio, has supported Reisman’s legal battle.

Reisman’s argument relies in part on the Supreme Court’s ...