 This is Mises Weekends with your host, Jeff Deist. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mises Weekends. Once again, our guest is Jacob Hubert. He is not only an associated scholar with the Mises Institute. He is a lawyer and attorney with the Liberty Justice Center in the state of Illinois. He is an attorney who attended University of Chicago. But more importantly, for our discussion this week, he was one of two main attorneys on the Janus versus AFSCME, the AFSCME case, that the Supreme Court decided this week dealing with labor unions. So Jacob, welcome. It's been an incredible week for you. No question. Yeah, it sure has. We're both lawyers. Unfortunately, I have to pay state bar fees to the state of California every year. And they use those fees to lobby for things I don't like, like gun control. It seems to me that from a libertarian perspective, there's something wrong with this. Yeah, there certainly is. The government shouldn't be able to use benefits, whether it's the benefit of a law license, the benefit of a government job, to get you to give up your constitutional rights and under the First Amendment to get you to subsidize a group that's going to use that to advocate ideas you disagree with. Well, I think we should set the framework here. There's a perception that libertarianism is anti-union. And that's not really true, right? I mean, give us the case for unions and how they would operate in a more libertarian legal or regulatory environment. Yeah, there's nothing inherently wrong with a labor union. That could just be a bunch of workers getting together in a group, voluntarily associating to bargain collectively with their employer, to go together with it to their employer, to get a better deal from them. That's in workers' interest to do that, bargaining separately. They have the problem of kind of undercutting each other. So if they can successfully organize to get more from their employer and the employer wants to deal with them, that's fine. Well, here's the thing. There's the reality of a case and the facts of a case and the legal doctrine that's applied by the court, rightly or wrongly. And then there's the public perception, kind of two different things. Give us your thoughts on what this case was really about. And why are we viewing it as a First Amendment case rather than a labor law case? This case is about whether the government can force its employees to give money to a union as a condition of getting a government job. And that's a First Amendment issue for government employees because when they give money to that government union, even if that union doesn't use it to give money to candidates for office, it uses it to bargain with the government in collective bargaining. And when government unions bargain with the government, they tell the government things like, how much it should pay workers, what kind of benefits it should provide, how it should run its programs, and sometimes even advocate for increased taxes to pay for all the stuff they're demanding. So that's just the purest sort of political speech. If anybody else talked to the government about those things, we recognize that as political speech and we call it lobbying. So what the government is doing with these unionized workers is forcing them to pay for somebody else's lobbying on things they might disagree with the union about. And how did this case come to you? Give us the basics of what it's been like to be involved in such a high-profile case. Well, we've heard from government workers across Illinois that they don't like the union, they don't like being forced to pay for its politics. A lot of people blame the big government unions in Illinois for the disastrous economic shape that Illinois is in where it has over $100 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and billions of dollars in unpaid bills and people fleeing the state to escape the tax burden. There's government workers who, although they work for government, don't think that it's right to make taxpayers pay more and more to them at a time when the private sector is struggling. And so we've heard from these people over the years and then finally we talked to one person who not only was willing to complain about it but also was willing to actually put his name on a case and take it all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, which of course is a very brave thing to do because this union on the other side of this case asked me is one of the most politically powerful entities in the country and unions tend not to be nice to people who go against them. Yeah, absolutely. And just as an aside, for people who don't understand conceptually, the notion of public interest law is a little different. This is basically when clients are taken on a pro bono basis by lawyers, many of whom, thank God, are libertarian minded like, of course, Clint Bullock who founded Institute for Justice is now on the Arizona Supreme Court. So people like Jacob Hubert work for organizations that operate by donations so that a client like Mr. Janus can actually prosecute and litigate a lengthy case that would undoubtedly probably bankrupt him. Otherwise, so people don't understand Jacob. I think the loneliness sometimes of libertarian causes attempting to litigate against state or federal or local government in their own courts. It's an uphill battle. Yeah, it does tend to be an uphill battle and we're only able to do it because there are people who care about liberty who are willing to fund this so that we can represent these clients free of charge and do everything you have to do to litigate a case. And as you say, it's often an uphill battle. We inevitably lose a lot of cases, but we do it knowing that sometimes if you win one, it can make a big difference for a lot of people's liberty. Well, I'm curious, was there any back and forth with Gorsuch? Did he play an active role in the oral arguments in this case? No, oddly enough, he didn't say anything at all at oral arguments in this case. And everybody was had their eyes on him because the Supreme Court actually took this issue up in a case in 2016 called Friedrich versus California Teachers Association. And after arguments in that case, Justice Scalia died and the case ended in a 4-4 tie vote, which made everybody think, okay, there's four conservatives on one side, four liberals on the other side. And so whoever comes onto the court is going to be the deciding vote. So then all eyes were on Gorsuch and you didn't give him anything at all argument and kept everybody guessing until this week finally got our decision. Well, it looks like the majority was written mostly by Sam Alito, and I'm going to give you a quote here. He said, this law compelled non-members of the union to subsidize private speech on public matters. Do you think Alito generally got it right? Are you happy with sort of the technical approach of his writing and his decision? Yeah, I mean, given the current doctrine, this is exactly what we wanted. We got everything we wanted in this decision. He recognized that this is compelled support for political speech. He recognized that the union's arguments about, well, these people are maybe free writing off the union's efforts. They might get benefits from the union they're not paying for. That's what the unions argue. And he said, it doesn't matter. Even if they are free writing, which is questionable, it doesn't matter because your right to choose what groups you support comes first under the Constitution. And he said, not only that, but for the government to take fees from people in the future, people have to affirmatively consent to have that money taken out of their paychecks. In some states like California, you've had the government automatically making people union members when they take a government job, whether they want to or not, whether they explicitly agree or not. Alito's decision says that's not okay. Everybody has to affirmatively consent before you take anything from them. So what are the ramifications down the line across states as a result of this case? This case affects at least 5 million government workers across 22 states where you had these forced union fees. Now, all of those people will be free to choose whether they're going to give any money to a union. And as for how people would choose, that remains to be seen. But I'm sure since a lot of people were forced into this situation and the unions haven't had to be responsive to these members in a long time because they've taken money for granted, a lot of people are going to decide not to support the union. But on the other hand, maybe the unions will change their approach a little bit. And since they actually have to persuade people to give them money, maybe they'll make it more attractive that we'll just have to see. Jacob, I remember when I worked for Hertz rental car during my grad school days, I had to join a union. It's a precondition of my employment. I went to the union hall and paid a fee and they took a little bit out of my paycheck every couple of weeks. Does this case have any presidential value or application at all to private sector unions? I don't think so because this case really turns on the fact that these public sector unions are engaging in political advocacy when they bargain with the government. And of course, the Supreme Court treats political speech a little differently than it treats all other speech. It gives that to absolute highest protection. And when a private sector union is bargaining with a private employer, that typically wouldn't involve matters of public policy the way a public sector union's bargaining does. So this case won't affect the private sector and isn't likely to lead to another decision that would affect the private sector. Well, Jacob, we thank you for your time. And we wanted to highlight the fact that you're a former Mises Institute guy, one of our associated scholars, an actual victory in the Supreme Court this week and also highlight that there's nothing libertarian per se that is pro or anti-union. This is a separate case. You can find more about Jacob and his organization at libertyjusticecenter.org. And in addition to being a brilliant lawyer, for those of you who don't know, he's also the author of a brilliant introductory primer called Libertarianism Today, which we sell at Mises.org. We'll post a link to it. Stephen Cancelo thinks it's one of the absolute best introductory libertarian books out there. So he's a busy guy. Jacob, thank you so much for your time. Ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend. Subscribe to Mises Weekends via iTunes U, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, or listen on Mises.org and YouTube.