I hope everyone enjoyed Christmas in October yesterday, and took the opportunity to celebrate the opening of the U.S. Supreme Court’s October 2015 term.
Thanks to this story by Dan Boyd in the Albuquerque Journal, I’ve learned that Governor Susana Martinez filed this amicus curiae brief last month in the U.S. Supreme Court to support the petitioners in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, an important case dealing with the intersection between labor law and the First Amendment. The questions presented in that case are as follows:
(1) Whether Abood v. Detroit Board of Education should be overruled and public-sector “agency shop” arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment; and
(2) whether it violates the First Amendment to require that public employees affirmatively object to subsidizing nonchargeable speech by public-sector unions, rather than requiring that employees affirmatively consent to subsidizing such speech.
If you know of any other amicus curiae briefs with a New Mexico connection that have been filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Tenth Circuit, or any other appellate court, please drop me a line, because I’ll be glad to consider linking to them here.
