The USCCB Misses Another Opportunity to Shut Up

On February 26, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the much-watched case of Janus v. AFSCME. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has submitted an amicus brief in Janus. Both as a Catholic and as a lawyer, I find the USCCB’s brief badly misguided in important ways.

 The legal issue in Janus is whether, consistent with the First Amendment, government employees who refuse to join the public-sector union that has been recognized as their representative for purposes of collective bargaining may nonetheless be compelled to pay the union a fee (a so-called “agency fee”) to cover their share of the union’s collective-bargaining expenditures, even when those employees object to the union’s political advocacy and lobbying. 

 To illustrate the issue more concretely: In 2014, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) donated $400,000 to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which in turn funded political candidates who support Planned Parenthood’s abortion agenda. May a government employee who is a faithful Catholic, as a condition of continued employment, be required to pay AFSCME a monthly agency fee? The USCCB amicus brief would have you believe that the “widely held” position of American bishops is to answer “yes” to the question whether agency fees may be imposed on government employees.

 The conclusion:

To be sure, the attentive reader will discern that the brief implicitly recognizes that how best to defend the legitimate rights of workers is, unlike the matters of abortion and marriage, a matter of prudential judgment on which Catholics can in good faith disagree. But it’s no surprise—indeed, it’s entirely predictable—that those not well versed in Catholic teaching will imagine that the American bishops, through the USCCB brief, are now putting all three matters on the same moral plane. Why would the USCCB sow such confusion?