Trust, but verify: Union's legislative lobbying not chargeable to nonmembers

In the 1988 case Communications Workers of Am. v. Beck, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified that employees who choose not to be union members have the right to refuse to pay fees for activities other than those "necessary to the union's performance of the duties of an exclusive representative of the employees in dealing with the employer on labor-management issues." Thirty-two years later, the case's interpretation is still a contested issue. The concept was recently addressed by the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island) in the legislative lobbying context.

United nurses

In 2009, nurses in a hospital whose exclusive bargaining representative was a union consisting of a group of 15 locals from Rhode Island, Vermont, and Connecticut resigned membership in the union and "objected to dues for activities they claimed were unrelated to collective bargaining, contract administration, or grievance adjustment." The union responded by lowering the objectors' fees but required them to continue to pay toward expenses for lobbying bills in the Rhode Island and Vermont legislatures.