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Last updated on Friday, November 7, 2014
(STATEHOUSE) - The Indiana Supreme Court says the state’s right to work law does not violate the state constitution.
In a unanimous ruling, the justices reversed a ruling by a judge in Lake County last year, who said that two provisions of the 2012 law violated the Indiana Constitution by barring unions from collecting dues from non-union members to cover the cost of bargaining and other services.
Unions had argued that the dues collections were necessary because federal law compelled them to represent workers who were not union members. But Justice Brent Dickson wrote in his opinion that compulsion to provide services was not a demand made by the state and, therefore, the law did not violate the state constitution.
Justice Robert Rucker concurred with the decision, but he wrote a separate opinion saying his vote was specific to the Lake County case. The initial lawsuit was filed by Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, and Rucker wrote that the union failed to show that the right to work law reduced the amount of dues it had received.
"In essence, there may very well exist a set of facts and circumstances that if properly presented and proven could demonstrate that a union has actually been deprived of compensation for particular services by application of the Right To Work Law," Rucker wrote. "And thus as to that union that statute would be unconstitutional as applied. However, this is not that case."
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