Watch the Supremes tomorrow

It could be a big day at the Supreme Court tomorrow. While you saw significant attention to the rulings that came down last week, especially the ruling on recess appointments, the two big ones are due tomorrow. The one that most people are watching is the Hobby Lobby case, which concerns whether companies can object to provisions of Obamacare, especially the birth control mandate, on religious grounds. That's huge, but I'm more interested in the other case, Harris v. Quinn.

Here's how the SCOTUSblog characterizes the case:

Issue: (1) Whether a state may, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, compel personal care providers to accept and financially support a private organization as their exclusive representative to petition the state for greater reimbursements from its Medicaid programs; and (2) whether the lower court erred in holding that the claims of providers in the Home Based Support Services Program are not ripe for judicial review.

You might recall that Gov. Dayton wanted to force independent day care providers to pay dues to unions for their self-imposed agency as negotiators for gubmint fees. That didn't work, but the DFL lege passed a law authorizing a union and Dayton signed it, both last year. All that may go bye-bye tomorrow. What's more interesting is what the larger implications might be for public sector unionism generally. Writing for Mother Jones, Andy Kroll explains why:

In the 2012 case Knox v. SEIU, Alito essentially invited labor's foes to challenge the basic model of public-employee unionism, in which non-union employees can be made to pay dues to a union for bargaining on their behalf, representing them in grievance issues, etc. Harris makes such a challenge; it's what Alito asked for.

Unions like to call those non-member payments "fair share" dues. If it's the union's job, they reason, to represent all members and nonmembers in a unionized workplace, then all those workers should pay their fair share for that representation. Conservatives—and Alito—say fair-share fees violate the First Amendment rights of non-union workers.

The outcome in Harris could cut a number of ways. The Supreme Court could uphold the lower court's decision dismissing the suit—a big union victory. It could strike down fair share fees—the equivalent of Congress passing a national right-to-work bill. (Right-to-work laws ban unions from collecting those fair-share fees from non-members.) Public-employee unions would survive that decision, but it would be a blow. The court could also effectively enact right-to-work nationwide and kneecap a union's ability to exclusively represent employees in a unionized workplace. That would be catastrophic for public-employee unions.

Kroll references Alito because, up to this point, he hasn't written a majority opinion yet in this term. Depending on how thing shake out, if Alito is writing the majority opinion, it won't go well for AFSCME and SEIU, among others. And if you want to know why, consider this evidence from the Wisconsin State Journal (via Ann Althouse):

A 2011 state law that ended most collective bargaining for most state employees went a step further at UW Hospital, where the law known as Act 10 is eliminating union representation for about 5,000 workers.

The first big impact will come Monday, when a contract ends for about 2,000 nurses and therapists represented by the Service Employees International Union chapter SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin.

The State Journal is being deliberately misleading, since Act 10 did not eliminate collective bargaining. Workers remain free to be in a union, but they have to recertify with a vote and it appears that SEIU can't get 51% of the workers to vote in favor of being in the union. What Act 10 did was stop the practice of compelling workers to pay SEIU for their services, even if they weren't members. This is the "fair share" in practice. Since SEIU and AFSCME spend more money on politicking than on collective bargaining, this has been a tough thing for both the unions and the Democratic Party, which receives nearly all union largesse these days.

If I were to guess, you're going to have a majority opinion that stops the practice of compelling day care providers to pay the middleman, but stops short of wiping out the fair share rules. If the Supremes take the extra step, it will completely change the game.