At a time when public-sector union advocates are sounding alarm bells due to the Supreme Court’s impending ruling on Governor Bruce Rauner’s pet anti-union lawsuit Janus v. AFSCME, some local unions and their members are quietly fighting back with legal action of their own.
The case went to the nation’s highest court this week, with the justices hearing oral arguments on Monday. Perhaps it was the prospect of a Janus victory that made Governor Rauner giddy enough to make his first official visit to Washington, D.C., since taking office. On Sunday he took to the nation’s capital to visit the Trump White House, and on Monday he listened to the Supreme Court’s arguments on the case the governor said in September would be “transformative for the state of Illinois, transformative for America and the relationship between our taxpayers and the people who work for our taxpayers.”
The third federal suit came on February 23, filed by the International Union of Operating Engineers Locals 139 and 420 against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. It challenges a law he signed in 2011 that greatly restricts public employee collective bargaining rights.
