From The Just Plain Weird. As In Weird That This Happens At All...

Big Labor Takes One in the Shorts Big Time
June 14th, 2007
The Supreme Court issued a decision today which tells unions they can’t just take a worker’s dues money and use it for political purposes without the permission of the worker. The following is a statement issued by Ron Nehring of the Alliance for Worker Freedom further explaining this key court ruling…

Supreme Court Rules States May Restrict Unions’ Use of Dues for Politics, Upholds Paycheck Protection for Workers.
(Washington, DC) — The future of campaign finance in America changed today as the United States Supreme Court ruled that states may enact “paycheck protection” laws requiring unions to obtain the persmission of members before using dues for politics.
The ruling is expected to provide a major boost to efforts to protect workers from being forced to fund candidates they do not support simply by being a member of a labor union.
Several states have passed paycheck protection laws in recent years, including Washington, Michigan, Idaho and Utah. In each case the laws came under relentless legal assault by unions desperate to protect their power to force members to fund their political agenda, regardless of the member’s personal views.
The SCOTUS blog put it this way:
The Court held today in Davenport that because a public-employee union possesses nonmember feepayers’ funds only because of special state- conferred privileges, the state can place a content- based condition on the union’s use of those funds — namely, that the union obtain the feepayers’ consent before using the funds for election-related activity.
Questioning the constitionality of paycheck protection laws has been a centerpiece of union campaigns against the reform. The Supreme Court’s ruling today clears away such objections.
The court found that because unions possess the funds due to a state mandate, the state also had the power to impose restrictions on the use of those funds. While the Davenport case specifically concerned the use of fees paid by non-members of the union, the rationale applies equally to union members.