Supreme Court takes public union, illegal search cases

On Thursday, the Supreme Court accepted nine new cases for arguments in its next term, including potentially significant decisions about the fate of public unions and the ability of police to use Facebook evidence to conduct searches.

Link: List of Accepted Cases

In Janus v. American Federation, the Court will again tackle the issue of compelled financial support for public unions.

Petitioners in the Janus case wants to the Supreme Court to settle a question twice presented to it in prior cases: Should public sector agency fee arrangements declared unconstitutional under the First Amendment?

The challengers claim part of the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act is unconstitutional. The act requires all employees working at a public agency or public organization to pay a fee for unions to negotiate contracts, even if some employees don’t belong to unions.

Last term, the Court split 4-4 on a similar case, and with the addition of Neil Gorsuch to the bench, there are expectations this long-running debate could be resolved this time. The dispute goes back to a 1977 Supreme Court ruling, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which rejected a constitutional challenge to agency fees. In March 2016, the Court couldn’t decide a direct challenge to the Abood case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association; it issued a one-sentence statement in Friedrichs that said a lower-court decision was affirmed because of the divided court.

As second noteworthy case granted on Thursday is Collins v. Virginia. This is case is about the Fourth Amendment’s “automobile exception.” Based on a 1999 Supreme Court decision, the exception states if “a car is readily mobile and probable cause exists to believe it contains contraband, the Fourth Amendment . . . permits police to search the vehicle” without a warrant.

In the Collins case, police saw a Facebook picture of what they believed was a stolen motorcycle, and then entered private property near a house, called its curtilage, to examine a motorcycle under a tarp, without a warrant. Collins claims Virginia’s courts expanded the automobile exception beyond precedents set the United States Supreme Court.

Early next week, the Court is expected to release of lengthy list of cases it considered in private conference this Monday and has denied.