Electioneering is the paradigmatic example of a non-germane use of non-union employees’ “agency shop” fees, and lies at the very CORE of the uses of non-union employees’ coerced exactions that a state can prevent. Nothing is more likely to offend a non-union employee than having to subsidize a union’s electioneering.

By contrast, what is “non-germane” is often unclear at the EDGES, resulting in endless litigation and arbitration.

Washington State’s choice to only protect against the most egregious example of non-germane activities — electioneering — provides a clearer, more precise, and less burdensome regulation of how unions use the funds they gather from non-members than does a broader ban on using non-members’ agency fees for all “non-germane” purposes.

If the state can restrict ALL non-germane uses of non-union employees’ compelled exactions, I don’t see why it can’t take the more modest step of restricting just the most egregious misuse of their compelled exactions.

(By analogy, in R.A.V. v. St. Paul (1992), the Supreme Court said that just as a state could prohibit a category of unprotected expression (say, obscenity), it could also prohibit the most egregious subcategory of that category of expression (say, unusually lascivious obscenity)).

The Washington law’s focus on unions and non-union employees, rather than corporations, make sense.

Corporate shareholders choose to be shareholders. Non-union employees, by contrast, don’t choose to be union members. Instead, they are forced by law to pay “agency shop” fees to the very union that they oppose.

Thus, it made perfect sense for the Washington law to protect non-union employees who are compelled to pay “agency shop” fees to unions, and not corporate shareholders.