Once Is Never Enough

The Ninth Circuit had already issued a painful opinion (for unions) in Chamber of Commerce v. Lockyer in April 2005, and so when the Petition for Rehearing was granted, some among us hoped that Saul the Organizing Angel had visited the panel in their sleep and granted them new wisdom on the question of whether employers could be barred from using state money to fight unions.

Of course, our hopes were foolish. The new decision is out here, and the Ninth Circuit has found that a California law barring employers from spending state funds to fight unions is preempted by the NLRA because of its chilling effect on employers' free speech rights. Employers' free speech rights. Argh.