I don’t know what went through the mind of Friedrichs attorney Michael A. Carvin upon hearing this, but he responded in the only sensible way.
“No,” he said.
Justice Sotomayor then read from the respondents’ brief of the California Attorney General, which cited the Perry case.
“When recognized as the exclusive bargaining representative, a union assumes an official position in the operational structure of a school.” So it seems to me that – and California tells the union what topics it can negotiate on, it requires them to do training, and in the end it accepts their recommendations with respect to the issues of employment at its own will, meaning the State is creating the union as part of the employment training and other responsibilities.
The discussion then veered off into the weeds of whether the teachers’ union is a creation of the State, which I’m sure must have puzzled the union members and officers in the audience. Justice Sotomayor eventually returned to the debate. She asked Garvin whether, without the benefit of agency fees, the union could claim it could not financially fulfill the duties of exclusive representative and ask the school district to pay those expenses.
Garvin then asked if she meant could the government subsidize the union’s collective bargaining efforts. “Mm-hmm,” she replied.