When the Supreme Court, in Citizens United, opened the floodgates for corporate money to dominate American politics, the cop out was that unions also benefitted and would be free to counter corporate influence with their own large war chests. Now the court has wiped away even that illusory solace. In its latest ruling, Janus v. AFSCME, the court has struck the death knell of unions, at least in the public sector, by holding that non-union workers may not be required to pay their reduced share of the costs of the unions' core activities (especially collective bargaining) even though those workers get all the benefits won by the unions and their contributions may not be used to support the unions' political activities.
The likely effect of this reversal of long-followed precedent by the court's slim conservative majority will be to cause unions to drastically shrink or even disappear, leaving the field of political funding to the corporate beneficiaries of Citizens United.
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