AFSCME today submitted its brief on the merits of the corporate-backed U.S. Supreme Court case, Janus v. AFSCME Council 31.
If facts, law and precedent matter, all nine Supreme Court justices should rule in favor of working people in the Janus case – just as they did more than 40 years ago when they found the state and local governments’ system of ordering their labor relations to be constitutional.
“This case is nothing more than the latest and most egregious in a long line of political attacks by billionaire CEOs and corporate interests who don’t believe that working people should have the same freedoms they do,” AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders said. “Working people have the facts, and 40 years of sound law are on our side. If the case is decided based on its legal merits, the freedom of working people to join together in strong unions will prevail and the Abood precedent should stand.”
Janus is nothing more than a politically-motivated assault on the freedom of working people to earn a better life and an attempt to further rig the rules in favor of billionaires and corporate interests. AFSCME urges the Supreme Court to carefully consider the facts, precedent, decades of labor peace and stability, and the motivations behind those seeking to undo it.
Now more than ever in the modern era, Americans must be able to trust their governmental institutions.
Just as millions of Americans rely on public service workers to keep their water clean, care for their families in hospitals and respond to their emergencies, millions of public service workers now rely on the Supreme Court to decide this case on its merits – not on the ideological animus of the billionaires and corporate interests funding this blatant effort to silence the voices of workers.
Read AFSCME’s brief here.