This case presents the question whether the First Amendment permits a State to compel personal care providers to subsidize speech on matters of public concern by a union that they do not wish to join or support. We hold that it does not, and we therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
I
A
Millions of Americans, due to age, illness, or injury, are unable to live in their own homes without assistance and are unable to afford the expense of in-home care. In order to prevent these individuals from having to enter a nursing home or other facility, the federal Medicaid program funds state-run programs that provide in-home services to individuals whose conditions would otherwise require institutionalization. See 42 U.S.C. § 1396n(c)(1). A State that adopts such a program receives federal funds to compensate persons who attend to the daily needs of individuals needing in-home care.
Ibid.
; see also
One of those States is Illinois, which has created the Illinois Department of Human Services Home Services Program, known colloquially as the state "Rehabilitation Program." Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, § 2405/3(f) (West 2012); 89 Ill. Admin. Code § 676.10 (2007). "[D]esigned to prevent the unnecessary institutionalization of individuals who may instead be satisfactorily maintained at home at a lesser cost to the State," § 676.10(a), the Rehabilitation *2624 Program allows participants to hire a "personal assistant" who provides homecare services tailored to the individual's needs. Many of these personal assistants are relatives of the person receiving care, and some of them provide care in their own homes. See App. 16-18.
Illinois law establishes an employer-employee relationship between the person receiving the care and the person providing it. The law states explicitly that the person receiving home care-the "customer"-"shall be the employer of the [personal assistant]." 89 Ill. Admin. Code § 676.30(b) (emphasis added). A "personal assistant" is defined as "an individual employed by the customer to provide ... varied services that have been approved by the customer's physician," § 676.30(p) (emphasis added), and the law makes clear that Illinois "shall not have control or input in the employment relationship between the customer and the personal assistants." § 676.10(c).
Other provisions of the law emphasize the customer's employer status. The customer "is responsible for controlling all aspects of the employment relationship between the customer and the [personal assistant (or PA) ], including, without limitation, locating and hiring the PA, training the PA, directing, evaluating and otherwise supervising the work performed by the personal assistant, imposing ... disciplinary action against the PA, and terminating the employment relationship between the customer and the PA." § 676.30(b). 1 In general, the customer "has complete discretion in which Personal Assistant he/she wishes to hire." § 684.20(b).
A customer also controls the contents of the document, the Service Plan, that lists the services that the customer will receive. § 684.10(a). No Service Plan may take effect without the approval of both the customer and the customer's physician. See § 684.10, 684.40, 684.50, 684.75. Service Plans are highly individualized. The Illinois State Labor Relations Board noted in 1985 that "[t]here is no typical employment arrangement here, public or otherwise; rather, there simply exists an arrangement whereby the state of Illinois pays individuals ... to work under the direction and control of private third parties." Illinois Dept. of Central Management Serv., No. S-RC-115, 2 PERI ¶ 2007, p. VIII-30, (1985), superseded, 2003 Ill. Laws p. 1929.
While customers exercise predominant control over their employment relationship with personal assistants, the State, subsidized by the federal Medicaid program, pays the personal assistants' salaries. The amount paid varies depending on the services provided, but as a general matter, it "corresponds to the amount the State would expect to pay for the nursing care component of institutionalization if the individual chose institutionalization." 89 Ill. Admin. Code § 679.50(a).
Other than providing compensation, the State's role is comparatively small. The State sets some basic threshold qualifications for employment. See *2625 §§ 686.10(h)(1)-(10). 2 (For example, a personal assistant must have a Social Security number, must possess basic communication skills, and must complete an employment agreement with the customer. §§ 686.10, 686.20, 686.40.) The State mandates an annual performance review by the customer, helps the customer conduct that review, and mediates disagreements between customers and their personal assistants. § 686.30. The State suggests certain duties that personal assistants should assume, such as performing "household tasks," "shopping," providing "personal care," performing "incidental health care tasks," and "monitoring to ensure the health and safety of the customer." § 686.20. In addition, a state employee must "identify the appropriate level of service provider" " based on the customer's approval of the initial Service Plan," § 684.20(a) (emphasis added), and must sign each customer's Service Plan. § 684.10.
B
Section 6 of the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act (PLRA) authorizes state employees to join labor unions and to bargain collectively on the terms and conditions of employment. Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 5, § 315/6(a). This law applies to "[e]mployees of the State and any political subdivision of the State," subject to certain exceptions, and it provides for a union to be recognized if it is "designated by the [Public Labor Relations] Board as the representative of the majority of public employees in an appropriate unit...." §§ 315/6(a), (c) .
The PLRA contains an agency-fee provision,
i.e.,
a provision under which members of a bargaining unit who do not wish to join the union are nevertheless required to pay a fee to the union. See
Workers v. Mobil Oil Corp.,
In the 1980's, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) petitioned the Illinois Labor Relations Board for permission to represent personal assistants employed by customers in the Rehabilitation Program, but the board rebuffed this effort. Illinois Dept. of Central Management Servs., supra, at VIII-30. The board concluded that "it is clear ... that [Illinois] does not exercise the type of control over the petitioned-for employees necessary *2626 to be considered, in the collective bargaining context envisioned by the [PLRA], their 'employer' or, at least, their sole employer." Ibid.
In March 2003, however, Illinois' newly elected Governor, Rod Blagojevich, circumvented this decision by issuing Executive Order 2003-08. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 45a-47a. The order noted the Illinois Labor Relations Board decision but nevertheless called for state recognition of a union as the personal assistants' exclusive representative for the purpose of collective bargaining with the State. This was necessary, Gov. Blagojevich declared, so that the State could "receive feedback from the personal assistants in order to effectively and efficiently deliver home services." Id ., at 46a. Without such representation, the Governor proclaimed, personal assistants "cannot effectively voice their concerns about the organization of the Home Services program, their role in the program, or the terms and conditions of their employment under the Program." Ibid.
Several months later, the Illinois Legislature codified that executive order by amending the PLRA. Pub. Act no. 93-204, § 5, 2003 Ill. Laws p. 1930. While acknowledging "the right of the persons receiving services ... to hire and fire personal assistants or supervise them," the Act declared personal assistants to be "public employees" of the State of Illinois-but "[s]olely for the purposes of coverage under the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act." Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, § 2405/3(f). The statute emphasized that personal assistants are not state employees for any other purpose, "including but not limited to, purposes of vicarious liability in tort and purposes of statutory retirement or health insurance benefits." Ibid.
Following a vote, SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana (SEIU-HII) was designated as the personal assistants' exclusive representative for purposes of collective bargaining. See App. 23. The union and the State subsequently entered into collective-bargaining agreements that require all personal assistants who are not union members to pay a "fair share" of the union dues. Id ., at 24-25. These payments are deducted directly from the personal assistants' Medicaid payments. Ibid. The record in this case shows that each year, personal assistants in Illinois pay SEIU-HII more than $3.6 million in fees. Id., at 25.
C
Three of the petitioners in the case now before us-Theresa Riffey, Susan Watts, and Stephanie Yencer-Price-are personal assistants under the Rehabilitation Program. They all provide in-home services to family members or other individuals suffering from disabilities. 3 Susan Watts, for example, serves as personal assistant for her daughter, who requires constant care due to quadriplegic cerebral palsy and other conditions. See App. 18.
In 2010, these petitioners filed a putative class action on behalf of all Rehabilitation Program personal assistants in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. See
*2627
The District Court dismissed their claims with prejudice, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed in relevant part, concluding that the case was controlled by this Court's decision in
Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed.
Petitioners sought certiorari. Their petition pointed out that other States were following Illinois' lead by enacting laws or issuing executive orders that deem personal assistants to be state employees for the purpose of unionization and the assessment of fair-share fees. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 22a. Petitioners also noted that Illinois has enacted a law that deems "individual maintenance home health workers"-a category that includes registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and certain therapists who work in private homes-to be "public employees" for similar purposes. Ill. Pub. Act no. 97-1158, 2012 Ill. Laws p. 7823.
In light of the important First Amendment questions these laws raise, we granted certiorari. 570 U.S. ----,
II
In upholding the constitutionality of the Illinois law, the Seventh Circuit relied on this Court's decision in
Abood
For this reason, Abood stands out, but the State of Illinois now asks us to sanction what amounts to a very significant expansion of Abood -so that it applies, not just to full-fledged public employees, but also to others who are deemed to be public employees solely for the purpose of unionization and the collection of an agency fee. Faced with this argument, we begin by examining the path that led to this Court's decision in Abood.
A
The starting point was
Railway Employes' v. Hanson,
Eventually, however, the view of the unions changed. See
ibr.US_Case_Law.Schema.Case_Body:v1">id
These arguments were successful, and the Act was amended in 1951 to
permit
a railroad and a union to enter into an agreement containing a union-shop provision. This amendment brought the Act into conflict with the laws of States that guaranteed the "right to work" and thereby outlawed the union shop. Nebraska, the setting of
Hanson,
was one such State.
In
Hanson,
the Union Pacific Railroad Company and its unionized workers entered into a collective-bargaining agreement that contained a provision requiring employees, "as a condition of their continued employment," to join and remain members of the union.
When the case reached this Court, the primary issue was whether the provision of the RLA that authorized union-shop agreements was "germane to the exercise of power under the Commerce Clause."
The employees also raised what amounted to a facial constitutional challenge to the same provision of the RLA. The employees claimed that a "union shop agreement forces men into ideological and political associations which violate their right to freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom of thought protected by the Bill of Rights."
*2629
The
Hanson
Court dismissed the objecting employees' First Amendment argument with a single sentence. The Court wrote: "On the present record, there is no more an infringement or impairment of First Amendment rights than there would be in the case of a lawyer who by state law is required to be a member of an integrated bar."
This explanation was remarkable for two reasons. First, the Court had never previously held that compulsory membership in and the payment of dues to an integrated bar was constitutional, and the constitutionality of such a requirement was hardly a foregone conclusion. Indeed, that issue did not reach the Court until five years later, and it produced a plurality opinion and four separate writings. See
Lathrop v. Donohue,
Second, in his
Lathrop
dissent, Justice Douglas, the author of
Hanson,
came to the conclusion that the First Amendment
did not permit
compulsory membership in an integrated bar. See
"I look on the
Hanson
case as a narrow exception to be closely confined. Unless we so treat it, we practically give
carte blanche
to any legislature to put at least professional people into goose-stepping brigades. Those brigades are not compatible with the First Amendment."
The First Amendment analysis in
Hanson
was thin, and the Court's resulting First Amendment holding was narrow. As the Court later noted, "all that was held in
Hanson
was that [the RLA] was constitutional in its
bare authorization
of union-shop contracts requiring workers to give 'financial support' to unions legally authorized to act as their collective bargaining agents."
Street,
B
Five years later, in
Street,
supra,
the Court considered another case in which workers objected to a union shop. Employees of the Southern Railway System raised a First Amendment challenge, contending that a substantial part of the money that they were required to pay to the union was used to support political candidates and causes with which they disagreed. A Georgia court enjoined the enforcement of the union-shop provision and entered judgment for the dissenting employees in the amount of the payments that they had been forced to make to the union. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed.
Id
., at 742-745,
*2630
Reviewing the State Supreme Court's decision, this Court recognized that the case presented constitutional questions "of the utmost gravity,"
ibr.US_Case_Law.Schema.Case_Body:v1">id
Having construed the RLA to contain this restriction, the
Street
Court then went on to discuss the remedies available for employees who objected to the use of union funds for political causes. The Court suggested two: The dissenting employees could be given a refund of the portion of their dues spent by the union for political or ideological purposes, or they could be given a refund of the portion spent on those political purposes that they had advised the union they disapproved.
6
Id
., at 774-775,
Justice Black, writing in dissent, objected to the Court's suggested remedies, and he accurately predicted that the Court's approach would lead to serious practical problems.
"Unions composed of a voluntary membership, like all other voluntary groups, should be free in this country to fight in the public forum to advance their own causes, to promote their choice of candidates and parties and to work for the doctrines or the laws they favor. But to the extent that Government steps in to force people to help espouse the particular causes of a group, that group-whether composed of railroad workers or lawyers-loses its status as a voluntary group."
Justice Frankfurter, joined by Justice Harlan, also dissented, arguing that the Court's remedy was conceptually flawed because a union may further the objectives of members by political means. See
ibr.US_Case_Law.Schema.Case_Body:v1">id
C
This brings us to
Abood,
which, unlike
Hanson
and
Street,
involved a public-sector collective-bargaining agreement. The Detroit Federation of Teachers served "as the exclusive representative of teachers employed by the Detroit Board of Education."
This Court treated the First Amendment issue as largely settled by
Hanson
and
Street
.
The
Abood
Court understood
Hanson
and
Street
to have upheld union-shop agreements in the private sector based on two primary considerations: the desirability of "labor peace" and the problem of " 'free riders[hip].' "
The Court thought that agency-shop provisions promote labor peace because the Court saw a close link between such provisions and the "principle of exclusive union representation."
Turning to the problem of free ridership,
Abood
noted that a union must " 'fairly and equitably ... represent all employees' " regardless of union membership, and the Court wrote as follows: The "union-shop arrangement has been thought to distribute fairly the cost of these activities among those who benefit, and it counteracts the incentive that employees might otherwise have to become 'free riders' to refuse to contribute to the union while obtaining benefits of union representation."
The plaintiffs in
Abood
argued that
Hanson
and
Street
should not be given much weight because they did not arise in the public sector, and the Court acknowledged that public-sector bargaining is different from private-sector bargaining in some notable respects.
Instead of drawing a line between the private and public sectors, the
Abood
Court drew a line between, on the one hand, a union's expenditures for "collective-bargaining, contract administration, and grievance-adjustment purposes,"
D
The Abood Court's analysis is questionable on several grounds. Some of these were noted or apparent at or before the time of the decision, but several have become more evident and troubling in the years since then.
The Abood Court seriously erred in treating Hanson and Street as having all but decided the constitutionality of compulsory payments to a public-sector union. As we have explained, Street was not a constitutional decision at all, and Hanson disposed of the critical question in a single, unsupported sentence that its author essentially abandoned a few years later. Surely a First Amendment issue of this importance deserved better treatment.
The
Abood
Court fundamentally misunderstood the holding in
Hanson,
which was really quite narrow. As the Court made clear in
Street,
"all that was held in
Hanson
was that [the RLA] was constitutional
in its bare authorization
of union-shop contracts requiring workers to give 'financial support' to unions legally authorized to act as their collective bargaining agents."
Abood failed to appreciate the difference between the core union speech involuntarily subsidized by dissenting public-sector employees and the core union speech involuntarily funded by their counterparts in the private sector. In the public sector, core issues such as wages, pensions, and benefits are important political issues, but that is generally not so in the private sector. In the years since Abood, as state and local expenditures on employee wages and benefits have mushroomed, the importance of the difference between bargaining in the public and private sectors has been driven home. 7
Abood failed to appreciate the conceptual difficulty of distinguishing in public-sector cases between union expenditures that are made for collective-bargaining purposes and those that are made to achieve political ends. In the private sector, the line is easier to see. Collective bargaining concerns the union's dealings with the employer; political advocacy and lobbying are directed at the government. But in the public sector, both collective-bargaining *2633 and political advocacy and lobbying are directed at the government.
Abood
does not seem to have anticipated the magnitude of the practical administrative problems that would result in attempting to classify public-sector union expenditures as either "chargeable" (in
Abood
's terms, expenditures for "collective-bargaining, contract administration, and grievance-adjustment purposes,"
id.,
at 232,
Abood
likewise did not foresee the practical problems that would face objecting nonmembers. Employees who suspect that a union has improperly put certain expenses in the "germane" category must bear a heavy burden if they wish to challenge the union's actions. "[T]he onus is on the employees to come up with the resources to mount the legal challenge in a timely fashion,"
Knox,
567 U.S., at ----,
Finally, a critical pillar of the Abood Court's analysis rests on an unsupported empirical assumption, namely, that the principle of exclusive representation in the public sector is dependent on a union or agency shop. As we will explain, see infra, at 2640 - 2641, this assumption is unwarranted.
III
A
Despite all this, the State of Illinois now asks us to approve a very substantial expansion of Abood 's reach. Abood involved full-fledged public employees, but in this case, the status of the personal assistants is much different. The Illinois Legislature has taken pains to specify that personal assistants are public employees for one purpose only: collective bargaining. For all other purposes, Illinois regards the personal assistants as private-sector employees. This approach has important practical consequences.
For one thing, the State's authority with respect to these two groups is vastly different. In the case of full-fledged public employees, the State establishes all of the duties imposed on each employee, as well as all of the qualifications needed for each position. The State vets applicants and chooses the employees to be hired. The State provides or arranges for whatever training is needed, and it supervises and evaluates the employees' job performance and imposes corrective measures if appropriate. If a state employee's performance is deficient, the State may discharge the employee in accordance with whatever procedures are required by law.
With respect to the personal assistants involved in this case, the picture is entirely changed. The job duties of personal assistants are specified in their individualized Service Plans, which must be approved by the customer and the customer's physician. 89 Ill. Admin. Code § 684.10. Customers have complete discretion to hire any personal assistant who meets the meager basic qualifications that the State prescribes in § 686.10. See § 676.30(b) (the customer "is responsible for controlling all aspects of the employment relationship between the customer and the [personal assistant], including, without limitation, locating and hiring the [personal assistant]" (emphasis added)); § 684.20(b) ("complete discretion in which Personal Assistant [the customer] wishes to hire" subject to baseline eligibility requirements).
Customers supervise their personal assistants on a daily basis, and no provision of the Illinois statute or implementing regulations gives the State the right to enter the home in which the personal assistant is employed for the purpose of checking on the personal assistant's job performance. Cf. § 676.20(b) (customer controls "without limitation ... supervising the work performed by the [personal assistant], imposing ... disciplinary action against the [personal assistant]"). And while state law mandates an annual review of each personal assistant's work, that evaluation is also controlled by the customer. §§ 686.10(k), 686.30. A state counselor is assigned to assist the customer in performing the review but has no power to override the customer's evaluation. See
Consistent with this scheme, under which personal assistants are almost entirely answerable to the customers and not to the State, Illinois withholds from personal assistants most of the rights and *2635 benefits enjoyed by full-fledged state employees. As we have noted already, state law explicitly excludes personal assistants from statutory retirement and health insurance benefits. Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, § 2405/3(f). It also excludes personal assistants from group life insurance and certain other employee benefits provided under the State Employees Group Insurance Act of 1971. Ibid . ("Personal assistants shall not be covered by the State Employees Group Insurance Act of 1971"). And the State "does not provide paid vacation, holiday, or sick leave" to personal assistants. 89 Ill. Admin. Code § 686.10(h)(7).
Personal assistants also appear to be ineligible for a host of benefits under a variety of other state laws, including the State Employee Vacation Time Act (see Ill. Stat., ch. 5, § 360/1); the State Employee Health Savings Account Law (see Ill. Stat., ch. 5, § 377/10-1); the State Employee Job Sharing Act (see Ill. Stat., ch. 5, § 380/0.01); the State Employee Indemnification Act (see Ill. Stat., ch. 5, § 350/2); and the Sick Leave Bank Act. See Ill. Stat., ch. 5, § 400/1. Personal assistants are apparently not entitled to the protection that the Illinois Whistleblower Act provides for full-fledged state employees. See Ill. Stat., ch. 740, § 174/1. And it likewise appears that personal assistants are shut out of many other state employee programs and benefits. The Illinois Department of Central Management Services lists many such programs and benefits, including a deferred compensation program, full worker's compensation privileges, 8 behavioral health programs, a program that allows state employees to retain health insurance for a time after leaving state employment, a commuter savings program, dental and vision programs, and a flexible spending program. 9 All of these programs and benefits appear to fall within the provision of the Rehabilitation Program declaring that personal assistants are not state employees for "any purposes" other than collective bargaining. See Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, § 2405/3(f).
Just as the State denies personal assistants most of the rights and benefits enjoyed by full-fledged state workers, the State does not assume responsibility for actions taken by personal assistants during the course of their employment. The governing statute explicitly disclaims "vicarious liability in tort." Ibid . So if a personal assistant steals from a customer, neglects a customer, or abuses a customer, the State washes its hands.
Illinois deems personal assistants to be state employees for one purpose only, collective bargaining, 10 but the scope of bargaining that may be conducted on their behalf is sharply limited. Under the governing Illinois statute, collective bargaining can occur only for "terms and conditions of employment that are within the State's control." Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, § 2405/3(f). That is not very much.
*2636
As an illustration, consider the subjects of mandatory bargaining under federal and state labor law that are out of bounds when it comes to personal assistants. Under federal law, mandatory subjects include the days of the week and the hours of the day during which an employee must work,
11
lunch breaks,
12
holidays,
13
vacations,
14
termination of employment,
15
and changes in job duties.
16
Illinois law similarly makes subject to mandatory collective-bargaining decisions concerning the "hours and terms and conditions of employment."
Belvidere v. Illinois State Labor Relations Bd.,
B
1
The unusual status of personal assistants has important implications for present purposes.
Abood
's rationale, whatever its strengths and weaknesses, is based on the assumption that the union possesses the full scope of powers and duties generally available under American labor law. Under the Illinois scheme now before us, however, the union's powers and duties are sharply circumscribed, and as a result, even the best argument for the "extraordinary power" that
Abood
allows a union to wield, see
Davenport,
In our post-
Abood
cases involving public-sector agency-fee issues,
Abood
has been a given, and our task has been to attempt to understand its rationale and to apply it in a way that is consistent with that rationale. In that vein,
Abood
's reasoning has been described as follows. The mere fact that nonunion members benefit from union speech is not enough to justify an agency fee because "private speech often furthers the interests of nonspeakers, and that does not alone empower the state to compel the speech to be paid for."
Lehnert,
This argument has little force in the situation now before us. Illinois law specifies that personal assistants "shall be paid at the hourly rate set by law," see 89 Ill. Admin. Code § 686.40(a), and therefore the union cannot be in the position of having to sacrifice higher pay for its members in order to protect the nonmembers whom it is obligated to represent. And as for the adjustment of grievances, the union's authority and responsibilities are narrow, as we have seen. The union has no authority with respect to any grievances that a personal assistant may have with a customer, and the customer has virtually complete control over a personal assistant's work.
The union's limited authority in this area has important practical implications. Suppose, for example that a customer fires a personal assistant because the customer wrongly believes that the assistant stole a fork. Or suppose that a personal assistant is discharged because the assistant shows no interest in the customer's favorite daytime soaps. Can the union file a grievance on behalf of the assistant? The answer is no.
It is true that Illinois law requires a collective-bargaining agreement to "contain a grievance resolution procedure which shall apply to all employees in the bargaining unit," Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 5, § 315/8, but in the situation here, this procedure appears to relate solely to any grievance that a personal assistant may have with the State, 17 not with the customer for whom the personal assistant works. 18
*2638 2
Because of
Abood
's questionable foundations, and because the personal assistants are quite different from full-fledged public employees, we refuse to extend
Abood
to the new situation now before us.
19
Abood
itself has clear boundaries; it applies to public employees. Extending those boundaries to encompass partial-public employees, quasi-public employees, or simply private employees would invite problems. Consider a continuum, ranging, on the one hand, from full-fledged state employees to, on the other hand, individuals who follow a common calling and benefit from advocacy or lobbying conducted by a group to which they do not belong and pay no dues. A State may not force every person who benefits from this group's efforts to make payments to the group. See
Lehnert,
If respondents' and the dissent's views were adopted, a host of workers who receive payments from a governmental entity for some sort of service would be candidates for inclusion within
Abood
's reach. Medicare-funded home health employees may be one such group. See Brief for Petitioners 51; 42 U.S.C. § 1395x(m);
If we allowed Abood to be extended to those who are not full-fledged public employees, it would be hard to see just where to draw the line, 20 and we therefore confine Abood 's reach to full-fledged state employees. 21
*2639 IV
A
Because
Abood
is not controlling, we must analyze the constitutionality of the payments compelled by Illinois law under generally applicable First Amendment standards. As we explained in
Knox
, "[t]he government may not prohibit the dissemination of ideas that it disfavors, nor compel the endorsement of ideas that it approves." 567 U.S., at ----,
In
Knox
, we considered specific features of an agency-shop agreement-allowing a union to impose upon nonmembers a special assessment or dues increase without providing notice and without obtaining the nonmembers' affirmative agreement-and we held that these features could not even satisfy the standard employed in
United States v. United Foods, Inc.,
While the features of the agency-fee provision in
Knox
could not meet even the commercial-speech standard employed in
United Foods,
it is apparent that the speech compelled in this case is not commercial speech. Our precedents define commercial speech as "speech that does no more than propose a commercial transaction,"
United Foods, supra,
at 409,
B
For present purposes, however, no fine parsing of levels of First Amendment scrutiny is needed because the agency-fee provision here cannot satisfy even the test used in
Knox
. Specifically, this provision does not serve a " 'compelling state interes[t] ... that cannot be achieved through means significantly less restrictive of associational freedoms.' "
Knox, supra,
at ----,
1
Focusing on the benefits of the union's status as the exclusive bargaining agent for all employees in the unit, respondents argue that the agency-fee provision promotes "labor peace," but their argument largely misses the point. Petitioners do not contend that they have a First Amendment right to form a rival union. Nor do they challenge the authority of the SEIU-HII to serve as the exclusive representative of all the personal assistants in bargaining with the State. All they seek is the right not to be forced to contribute to the union, with which they broadly disagree.
A union's status as exclusive bargaining agent and the right to collect an agency fee from non-members are not inextricably linked. For example, employees in some federal agencies may choose a union to serve as the exclusive bargaining agent for the unit, but no employee is required to join the union or to pay any union fee. Under federal law, in agencies in which unionization is permitted, "[e]ach employee shall have the right to form, join, or assist any labor organization,
or to refrain from any such activity,
freely and without fear of penalty or reprisal, and each employee shall be protected in the exercise of such right."
Moreover, even if the agency fee provision at issue here were tied to the union's status as exclusive bargaining agents, features of the Illinois scheme would still undermine the argument that the agency fee plays an important role in maintaining labor peace. For one thing, any threat to labor peace is diminished because the personal assistants do not work together in a common state facility but instead spend all their time in private homes, either the customers' or their own. Cf.
Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators' Assn.,
The union's very restricted role under the Illinois law is also significant. Since the union is largely limited to petitioning the State for greater pay and benefits, the specter of conflicting demands by personal assistants is lessened. And of course, State officials must deal on a daily basis with conflicting pleas for funding in many contexts.
2
Respondents also maintain that the agency-fee provision promotes the welfare of personal assistants and thus contributes to the success of the Rehabilitation Program. As a result of unionization, they claim, the wages and benefits of personal assistants have been substantially improved; 23 orientation and training programs, *2641 background checks, and a program to deal with lost and erroneous paychecks have been instituted; 24 and a procedure was established to resolve grievances arising under the collective-bargaining agreement (but apparently not grievances relating to a Service Plan or actions taken by a customer). 25
The thrust of these arguments is that the union has been an effective advocate for personal assistants in the State of Illinois, and we will assume that this is correct. But in order to pass exacting scrutiny, more must be shown. The agency-fee provision cannot be sustained unless the cited benefits for personal assistants could not have been achieved if the union had been required to depend for funding on the dues paid by those personal assistants who chose to join. No such showing has been made.
In claiming that the agency fee was needed to bring about the cited improvements, the State is in a curious position. The State is not like the closed-fisted employer that is bent on minimizing employee wages and benefits and that yields only grudgingly under intense union pressure. As Governor Blagojevich put it in the executive order that first created the Illinois program, the State took the initiative because it was eager for "feedback" regarding the needs and views of the personal assistants. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 46. Thereafter, a majority of the personal assistants voted to unionize. When they did so, they must have realized that this would require the payment of union dues, and therefore it may be presumed that a high percentage of these personal assistants became union members and are willingly paying union dues. Why are these dues insufficient to enable the union to provide "feedback" to a State that is highly receptive to suggestions for increased wages and other improvements? A host of organizations advocate on behalf of the interests of persons falling within an occupational group, and many of these groups are quite successful even though they are dependent on voluntary contributions. Respondents' showing falls far short of what the First Amendment demands.
V
Respondents and their supporting amici make two additional arguments that must be addressed.
A
First, respondents and the Solicitor General urge us to apply a balancing test derived from
Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty.,
*2642 In any event, this effort to recast Abood falls short. To begin, the Pickering test is inapplicable because with respect to the personal assistants, the State is not acting in a traditional employer role. 27 But even if it were, application of Pickering would not sustain the agency-fee provision.
Pickering
and later cases in the same line concern the constitutionality of restrictions on speech by public employees. Under those cases, employee speech is unprotected if it is not on a matter of public concern (or is pursuant to an employee's job duties), but speech on matters of public concern may be restricted only if "the interest of the state, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees" outweighs "the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern."
Attempting to fit
Abood
into the
Pickering
framework, the United States contends that union speech that is germane to collective bargaining does not address matters of public concern and, as a result, is not protected. Taking up this argument, the dissent insists that the speech at issue here is not a matter of public concern. According to the dissent, this is "the prosaic stuff of collective bargaining."
Post,
at 2655. Does it have any effect on the public? The dissent's answer is: "not terribly much."
Post,
at 2655. As the dissent sees it, speech about such funding is not qualitatively different from the complaints of a small-town police chief regarding such matters as the denial of $338 in overtime pay or directives concerning the use of police vehicles and smoking in the police station. See
post,
at 2655;
Borough of Duryea,
This argument flies in the face of reality. In this case, for example, the category of union speech that is germane to collective bargaining unquestionably includes speech in favor of increased wages and benefits for personal assistants. Increased wages and benefits for personal assistants would almost certainly mean increased expenditures under the Medicaid program, and it is impossible to argue that the level of *2643 Medicaid funding (or, for that matter, state spending for employee benefits in general) is not a matter of great public concern.
In recent years, Medicaid expenditures have represented nearly a quarter of all state expenditures. See National Association of State Budget Officers, Summary: Fall 2013 Fiscal Survey of States (Dec. 10, 2013), online at http:// www. nasbo. org. "Medicaid has steadily eaten up a growing share of state budgets."
29
In fiscal year 2014, "[t]hirty-five states increased spending for Medicaid for a net increase of $6.8 billion."
For this reason, if Pickering were to be applied, it would be necessary to proceed to the next step of the analysis prescribed in that case, and this would require an assessment of both the degree to which the agency-fee provision promotes the efficiency of the Rehabilitation Program and the degree to which that provision interferes with the First Amendment interests of those personal assistants who do not wish to support the union.
We need not discuss this analysis at length because it is covered by what we have already said. Agency-fee provisions unquestionably impose a heavy burden on the First Amendment interests of objecting employees. See
Knox,
567 U.S., at ----,
B
Respondents contend, finally, that a refusal to extend
Abood
to cover the situation presented in this case will call into question our decisions in
Keller v. State Bar of Cal.,
In
Keller,
we considered the constitutionality of a rule applicable to all members of an "integrated" bar,
i.e.,
"an association of attorneys in which membership and dues are required as a condition of practicing law."
This decision fits comfortably within the framework applied in the present case. Licensed attorneys are subject to detailed ethics rules, and the bar rule requiring the payment of dues was part of this regulatory scheme. The portion of
*2644
the rule that we upheld served the "State's interest in regulating the legal profession and improving the quality of legal services."
Contrary to respondents' submission, the same is true with respect to Southworth, supra . In that case, we upheld the constitutionality of a university-imposed mandatory student activities fee that was used in part to support a wide array of student groups that engaged in expressive activity. The mandatory fee was challenged by students who objected to some of the expression that the fee was used to subsidize, but we rejected that challenge, and our holding is entirely consistent with our decision in this case.
Public universities have a compelling interest in promoting student expression in a manner that is viewpoint neutral. See
Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va.,
* * *
For all these reasons, we refuse to extend Abood in the manner that Illinois seeks. If we accepted Illinois' argument, we would approve an unprecedented violation of the bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support. The First Amendment prohibits the collection of an agency fee from personal assistants in the Rehabilitation Program who do not want to join or support the union.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed in part and affirmed in part, 30 and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice KAGAN, with whom Justice GINSBURG, Justice BREYER, and Justice SOTOMAYOR join, dissenting.
Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed.,
And that result would fully comport with our decisions applying the First Amendment to public employment. Abood is not, as the majority at one point describes it, "something of an anomaly," allowing uncommon interference with individuals' expressive activities. Ante, at 2627. Rather, the lines it draws and the balance it strikes reflect the way courts generally evaluate claims that a condition of public employment violates the First Amendment. Our decisions have long afforded government entities broad latitude to manage their workforces, even when that affects speech they could not regulate in other contexts. Abood is of a piece with all those decisions: While protecting an employee's most significant expression, that decision also enables the government to advance its interests in operating effectively-by bargaining, if it so chooses, with a single employee representative and preventing free riding on that union's efforts.
For that reason, one aspect of today's opinion is cause for satisfaction, though hardly applause. As this case came to us, the principal question it presented was whether to overrule Abood : The petitioners devoted the lion's share of their briefing and argument to urging us to overturn that nearly 40-year-old precedent (and the respondents and amici countered in the same vein). Today's majority cannot resist taking potshots at Abood, see ante, at 2632 - 2634, but it ignores the petitioners' invitation to depart from principles of stare decisis . And the essential work in the majority's opinion comes from its extended (though mistaken) distinction of Abood, see ante, at 2633 - 2638, not from its gratuitous dicta critiquing Abood 's foundations. That is to the good-or at least better than it might be. The Abood rule is deeply entrenched, and is the foundation for not tens or hundreds, but thousands of contracts between unions and governments across the Nation. Our precedent about precedent, fairly understood and applied, makes it impossible for this Court to reverse that decision.
I
I begin where this case should also end-with this Court's decision in
Abood
. There, some public school teachers in Detroit challenged a clause in their collective bargaining agreement compelling non-union members to pay the union a service charge equivalent to regular dues. The Court upheld the requirement so long as the union was using the money for "collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment," rather than for political or ideological activities.
*2646
] First Amendment interests"; employees, after all, might object to policies adopted or "activities undertaken by the union in its role as exclusive representative."
This case thus raises a straightforward question: Does
Abood
apply equally to Illinois's care providers as to Detroit's teachers? No one thinks that the fair-share provisions in the two cases differ in any relevant respect. Nor do the petitioners allege that the SEIU is crossing the line
Abood
drew by using their payments for political or ideological activities. The only point in dispute is whether it matters that the personal assistants here are employees not only of the State but also of the disabled persons for whom they care. Just as the Court of Appeals held, that fact should make no difference to the analysis. See
To see how easily Abood resolves this case, consider how Illinois structured the petitioners' employment, and also why it did so. The petitioners work in Illinois's Medicaid-funded Rehabilitation Program, which provides in-home services to persons with disabilities who otherwise would face institutionalization. Under the program, each disabled person (the State calls them "customers") receives care from a personal assistant; the total workforce exceeds 20,000. The State could have asserted comprehensive control over all the caregivers' activities. But because of the personalized nature of the services provided, Illinois instead chose (as other States have as well) to share authority with the customers themselves. The result is that each caregiver has joint employers-the State and the customer-with each controlling significant aspects of the assistant's work. 1
For its part, Illinois sets all the workforce-wide terms of employment. Most notably, the State determines and pays the employees' wages and benefits, including health insurance (while also withholding taxes). See 89 Ill. Admin. Code §§ 686.10(h)(10), 686.40(a)-(b) (2007); App. 44-46. By regulation, Illinois establishes the job's basic qualifications: for example, the assistant must provide references or recommendations and have adequate experience and training for the services given. See §§ 686.10(c), (f). So too, the State describes the services any personal assistant may provide, and prescribes the terms of standard employment contracts entered into between personal assistants and customers. See §§ 686.10(h), 686.20.
*2647 Illinois as well structures the individual relationship between the customer and his assistant (in ways the majority barely acknowledges). Along with both the customer and his physician, a state-employed counselor develops a service plan laying out the assistant's specific job responsibilities, hours, and working conditions. See §§ 684.10, 684.50. That counselor also assists the customer in conducting a state-mandated annual performance review, based on state-established criteria, and mediates any resulting disagreements. See § 686.30.
Within the structure designed by the State, the customer of course has crucial responsibilities. He exercises day-to-day supervisory control over the personal assistant. See § 676.30(b). And he gets both to hire a particular caregiver (from among the pool of applicants Illinois has deemed qualified) and to impose any needed discipline, up to and including discharge. See ibid. ; § 677.40(d). But even as to those matters, the State plays a role. Before a customer may hire an assistant, the counselor must sign off on the employee's ability to follow the customer's directions and communicate with him. See §§ 686.10(d)-(e) (requiring that the employee demonstrate these capabilities "to the satisfaction of" the counselor). And although only a customer can actually fire an assistant, the State can effectively do so by refusing to pay one who fails to "meet [state] standards." § 677.40(d). The majority reads that language narrowly, see ante, at 2624, n. 1, 22, but the State does not: It has made clear not just in its litigation papers, but also in its collective bargaining agreements and customer guidance that it will withhold payment from an assistant (or altogether disqualify her from the program) based on credible allegations of customer abuse, neglect, or financial exploitation. See App. 55; Brief for Respondent Quinn 3, 50; Ill. Dept. of Human Servs., Customer Guidance for Managing Providers 8, online at http:// www. dhs. state. il. us/ One Net Library/ 27897/ documents/ Brochures/ 4365. pdf (as visited June 27, 2014, and available in Clerk of Court's case file). 2
Given that set of arrangements, Abood should control. Although a customer can manage his own relationship with a caregiver, Illinois has sole authority over every workforce-wide term and condition of the assistants' employment-in other words, the issues most likely to be the subject of collective bargaining. In particular, if an assistant wants an increase in pay, she must ask the State, not the individual customer. So too if she wants better benefits. (Although the majority notes that caregivers do not receive statutory retirement and health insurance benefits, see ante, at 2634 - 2635, that is irrelevant: Collective bargaining between the State and SEIU has focused on benefits from the beginning, and has produced state-funded health insurance for personal assistants.) And because it is Illinois that would sit down at a bargaining table to address those subjects-the ones that matter most to employees and so most affect workforce stability-the State's stake in a fair-share provision is the same as in Abood . Here too, the State has an interest in promoting effective operations by negotiating with an equitably and adequately funded exclusive bargaining agent over terms and conditions of employment. That Illinois has delegated to program customers various individualized employment issues makes *2648 no difference to those state interests. If anything, as the State has contended, the dispersion of employees across numerous workplaces and the absence of day-to-day state supervision provides an additional reason for Illinois to want to "address concerns common to all personal assistants" by negotiating with a single representative: Only in that way, the State explains, can the employees effectively convey their concerns about employment under the Rehabilitation Program. App. to Pet. for Cert. 46a (Exec. Order No. 2003-8).
Indeed, the history of that program forcefully demonstrates Illinois's interest in bargaining with an adequately funded exclusive bargaining agent-that is, the interest
Abood
recognized and protected. Workforce shortages and high turnover have long plagued in-home care programs, principally because of low wages and benefits. That labor instability lessens the quality of care, which in turn, forces disabled persons into institutions and (massively) increases costs to the State. See Brief for Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute as
Amicus Curiae
16-26; Brief for State of California et al. as
Amici Curiae
4-5. The individual customers are powerless to address those systemic issues; rather, the State-because of its control over workforce-wide terms of employment-is the single employer that can do so. And here Illinois determined (as have nine other States, see Brief for Respondent SEIU 51, n. 14) that negotiations with an exclusive representative offered the best chance to set the Rehabilitation Program on firmer footing. Because of that bargaining, as the majority acknowledges, home-care assistants have nearly doubled their wages in less than 10 years, obtained state-funded health insurance, and benefited from better training and workplace safety measures. See
ante,
at 2640 - 2641; Brief for Respondent Quinn 7; App. 44-48. The State, in return, has obtained guarantees against strikes or other work stoppages, see
It is not altogether easy to understand why the majority thinks what it thinks: Today's opinion takes the tack of throwing everything against the wall in the hope that something might stick. A vain hope, as it turns out. Even once disentangled, the various strands of the majority's reasoning do not distinguish this case from Abood .
Parts of the majority's analysis appear to rest on the simple presence of another employer, possessing significant responsibilities, in addition to the State. See
ante,
at 2633 - 2634, 2636. But this Court's cases provide no warrant for holding that joint public employees are not real ones. To the contrary, the Court has made clear that the government's wide latitude to manage its workforce extends to such employees, even as against their First Amendment claims. The government's prerogative as employer, we recently explained, turns not on the "formal status" of an employee, but on the nature of the public "interests at stake"; we therefore rejected the view that "the Government's broad authority in managing its affairs should apply with diminished force" to contract employees whose "direct employment relationship" is with another party.
NASA v. Nelson,
*2649
d[id] not interact daily with government officers and employees," and were not subject to the government's "day-to-day control" over "the details of how work is done."
Board of Comm'rs, Wabaunsee Cty. v. Umbehr,
Next, the majority emphasizes that the Illinois Legislature deemed personal assistants "public employees" solely "for the purposes of coverage under the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act" and not for other purposes, like granting statutory benefits and incurring vicarious liability in tort. Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, § 2405/3(f) (West 2012); see
ante,
at 2626, 2634 - 2635; but cf.
Martin v. Illinois,
Further, the majority claims, "the scope of bargaining" that the SEIU may conduct for caregivers is "circumscribed" because the customer has authority over individualized employment matters like hiring and firing.
Ante,
at 2635 - 2637. But (at the risk of sounding like a broken record) so what? Most States limit the scope of permissible bargaining in the public sector-often ruling out of bounds similar, individualized decisions. See R. Kearney & P. Mareschal, Labor Relations in the Public Sector 75-77 (5th ed. 2014) ("The great majority of state statutes" exclude "certain matters from the scope of negotiations," including, for example, personnel decisions respecting "hiring, promotion, and dismissal"); Note, Developments in the Law-Public Employment,
Finally, the majority places weight on an idiosyncrasy of Illinois law: that a regulation requires uniform wages for all personal assistants. See ante, at 2636. According to the majority, that means Abood 's free-rider rationale "has little force in the situation now before us": Even absent the duty of fair representation (requiring the union to work on behalf of all employees, members and non-members alike, see infra, at 2656 - 2657), the union could not bargain one employee's wages against another's. Ante, at 2637. 6 But that idea is doubly wrong. First, the Illinois regulation applies only to wages. It does not cover, for example, the significant health benefits that the SEIU has obtained for in-home caregivers, or any other benefits for which it may bargain in the future. Nor does the regulation prevent preferential participation in the grievance process, which governs all disputes between Illinois and caregivers arising from the terms of their agreement. See n. 2, supra . And second, even if the regulation covered everything subject to collective bargaining, the majority's reasoning is a non-sequitur. All the regulation would do then is serve as suspenders to the duty of fair representation's belt: That Illinois has two ways to ensure that the results of collective bargaining redound to the benefit of all employees serves to compound, rather than mitigate, the union's free-rider problem.
As far as I can tell, that covers the majority's reasons for distinguishing this case from Abood . And even when considered in combination, as the majority does, they do not succeed. What makes matters still worse is the perverse result of the majority's decision: It penalizes the State for giving disabled persons some control over their own care. If Illinois had structured the program, as it could have, to centralize every aspect of the employment relationship, no question could possibly *2651 have arisen about Abood 's application. Nothing should change because the State chose to respect the dignity and independence of program beneficiaries by allowing them to select and discharge, as well as supervise day-to-day, their own caregivers. A joint employer remains an employer, and here, as I have noted, Illinois kept authority over all workforce-wide terms of employment-the very issues most likely to be the subject of collective bargaining. The State thus should also retain the prerogative-as part of its effort to "ensure efficient and effective delivery of personal care services"-to require all employees to contribute fairly to their bargaining agent. App. to Pet. for Cert. 45a (Exec. Order No. 2003-8).
II
Perhaps recognizing the difficulty of plausibly distinguishing this case from Abood, the petitioners raised a more fundamental question: the continued viability of Abood as to all public employees, even what the majority calls "full-fledged" ones. Ante, at 2627. That issue occupied the brunt of the briefing and argument in this Court. See, e.g., Brief for Petitioners 16-24; Brief for Respondent SEIU 15-44; Brief for Respondent Quinn 15-29; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 14-28; Tr. of Oral Arg. 5-21, 32-39, 42-47, 50-60. The majority declines the petitioners' request to overturn precedent-and rightly so: This Court does not have anything close to the special justification necessary to overturn Abood . Still, the majority cannot restrain itself from providing a critique of that decision, suggesting that it might have resolved the case differently in the first instance. That dicta is off-base: Abood corresponds precisely to this Court's overall framework for assessing public employees' First Amendment claims. To accept that framework, while holding Abood at arms-length, is to wish for a sui generis rule, lacking in justification, applying exclusively to union fees.
A
This Court's view of
stare decisis
makes plain why the majority cannot-and did not-overturn
Abood
. That doctrine, we have stated, is a "foundation stone of the rule of law."
Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community,
572 U.S. ----, ----,
And
Abood
is not just any precedent: It is entrenched in a way not many decisions are. Over nearly four decades, we have cited
Abood
favorably numerous times, and we have repeatedly affirmed and applied its core distinction between the costs of collective bargaining (which the government can demand its employees share) and those of political activities (which it cannot). See,
e.g.,
Locke v. Karass,
Perhaps still more important,
Abood
has created enormous reliance interests. More than 20 States have enacted statutes authorizing fair-share provisions, and on that basis public entities of all stripes have entered into multi-year contracts with unions containing such clauses. "
Stare decisis
has added force," we have held, when overturning a precedent would require "States to reexamine [and amend] their statutes."
Hilton v. South Carolina Public Railways Comm'n,
The majority's criticisms of
Abood
do not remotely defeat those powerful reasons for adhering to the decision. The special justifications needed to reverse an opinion must go beyond demonstrations (much less assertions) that it was wrong; that is the very point of
stare decisis
. And the majority's critique extends no further. It is mostly just a catalog of errors
Abood
supposedly committed-reproaches that could have been leveled as easily 40 years ago as today. Only the idea that
Abood
did not "anticipate" or "foresee" the difficulties of distinguishing between collective bargaining and political activities, see
ante,
at 2632 - 2633, might be thought different. But in fact,
Abood
predicted precisely those issues. See
And the majority says nothing to the contrary: It does not pretend to have the requisite justifications to overrule Abood . Readers of today's decision will know that Abood does not rank on the majority's top- *2653 ten list of favorite precedents-and that the majority could not restrain itself from saying (and saying and saying) so. Yet they will also know that the majority could not, even after receiving full-dress briefing and argument, come up with reasons anywhere near sufficient to reverse the decision. Much has gone wrong in today's ruling, but this has not: Save for an unfortunate hiving off of ostensibly "partial-public" employees, ante, at 2638, Abood remains the law.
B
And even apart from stare decisis, that result is as it should be; indeed, it is the only outcome that makes sense in the context of our caselaw. In numerous cases decided over many decades, this Court has addressed the government's authority to adopt measures limiting expression in the capacity not of sovereign but of employer. Abood fits-fits hand-in-glove-with all those cases, in both reasoning and result. Were that rule not in place, our law respecting public employees' speech rights would contain a serious anomaly-a different legal standard (and not a good one) applying exclusively to union fees.
This Court has long acknowledged that the government has wider constitutional latitude when it is acting as employer than as sovereign. See
Engquist v. Oregon Dept. of Agriculture,
Further, this Court has developed and applied those principles in numerous cases involving First Amendment claims. "Government employers, like private employers," we have explained, "need a significant degree of control over their employees' words" in order to "efficient[ly] provi[de] public services."
Garcetti,
Abood
is of a piece with all those decisions; and indeed, its core analysis mirrors
Pickering
's. The
Abood
Court recognized that fair-share provisions function as prerequisites to employment, assessed to cover the costs of representing employees in collective bargaining. Private employers,
Abood
noted, often established such employment conditions, to ensure adequate funding of an exclusive bargaining agent, and thus to promote labor stability.
Abood
acknowledged (contrary to the majority's statement, see
ante,
at 2632) certain "differences in the nature of collective bargaining in the public and private sectors."
The Court struck the appropriate balance by drawing a line, corresponding to Pickering 's, between fees for collective bargaining and those for political activities. On the one side, Abood decided, speech within the employment relationship about pay and working conditions pertains mostly to private concerns and implicates the government's interests as employer; thus, the government could compel fair-share fees for collective bargaining. On the other side, speech in political campaigns relates to matters of public concern and has no bearing on the government's interest in structuring its workforce; thus, compelled fees for those activities are forbidden. In that way, the law surrounding fair-share provisions coheres with the law relating to public employees' speech generally. Or, said otherwise, an anomaly in the government's regulation of its workforce would arise in Abood 's absence: Public employers could then pursue all policies, except this single one, reasonably designed to manage personnel and enhance the effectiveness of their programs.
The majority's critique of Abood principally goes astray by deeming all this irrelevant. This Court, the majority insists, has never "seen Abood as based on Pickering balancing." Ante, at 2641. But to rely on Abood ' s failure to cite Pickering more often, as the majority does, see ante, at 2641, n. 26, is to miss the essential point. Although stemming from different historic antecedents, the two decisions addressed variants of the same issue: the extent of the government's power to adopt employment conditions affecting expression. And as just discussed, the two gave strikingly parallel answers, providing a coherent framework to adjudicate the constitutionality of those regulations.
To the extent the majority engages with that framework, its analysis founders at *2655 the first step, in assessing the First Amendment value of the speech at issue here. A running motif of the majority opinion is that collective bargaining in the public sector raises significant questions about the level of government spending. Ante, at 2632 - 2633 and n. 7, 2642 and nn. 28-29. By financing the SEIU's collective bargaining over wages and benefits, the majority suggests, in-home caregivers-whether they wish to or not-take one side in a debate about those issues.
But that view of the First Amendment interests at stake blinks decades' worth of this Court's precedent. Our decisions (tracing from
Pickering
as well as
Abood
) teach that internal workplace speech about public employees' wages, benefits, and such-that is, the prosaic stuff of collective bargaining-does not become speech of "public concern" just because those employment terms may have broader consequence. To the contrary, we have made clear that except in narrow circumstances we will not allow an employee to make a "federal constitutional issue" out of basic "employment matters, including working conditions, pay, discipline, promotions, leave, vacations, and terminations."
Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri,
564 U.S. ----, ----,
Consider an analogy, not involving union fees: Suppose an employee violates a government employer's work rules by demanding, at various inopportune times and places, higher wages for both himself and his co-workers (which, of course, will drive up public spending). The government employer disciplines the employee, and he brings a First Amendment claim. Would the Court consider his speech a matter of public concern under Pickering ? I cannot believe it would, and indeed the petitioners' own counsel joins me in that view. He maintained at oral argument that such speech would concern merely an "internal proprietary matter," thus allowing the employer to take disciplinary action. Tr. of Oral Arg. 6, 10. If the majority thinks otherwise, government entities across the country should prepare themselves for unprecedented limitations on their ability to regulate their workforces. But again, I doubt they need to worry, because this Court has never come close to holding that any matter of public employment affecting public spending (which is to say most such matters) becomes for that reason alone an issue of public concern. (And on the off-chance that both the petitioners and I are wrong on that score, I am doubly confident that the government would prevail under Pickering 's balancing test.)
I can see no reason to treat the expressive interests of workers objecting to payment of union fees, like the petitioners here, as worthy of greater consideration. The subject matter of the speech is the same: wages and benefits for public employees. Or to put the point more fully: In both cases (mine and the real one), the employer is sanctioning employees for
*2656
choosing either to say or not to say something respecting their terms and conditions of employment. Of course, in my hypothetical, the employer is stopping the employee from speaking, whereas in this or any other case involving union fees, the employer is forcing the employee to support such expression. But I am sure the majority would agree that that difference does not make a difference-in other words, that the "difference between compelled speech and compelled silence" is "without constitutional significance."
Riley v. National Federation of Blind of N. C., Inc.,
Perhaps, though, the majority's skepticism about
Abood
comes from a different source: its failure to fully grasp the government's interest in bargaining with an adequately funded exclusive bargaining representative. One of the majority's criticisms of
Abood,
stated still more prominently in
Knox,
567 U.S., at ----,
But
Abood
and a host of our other opinions have explained and relied on an essential distinction between unions and special-interest organizations generally. See,
e.g.,
Abood,
As is often the case, Justice SCALIA put the point best:
"Where the state imposes upon the union a duty to deliver services, it may permit the union to demand reimbursement for them; or, looked at from the other end, where the state creates in the nonmembers a legal entitlement from
*2657
the union, it may compel them to pay the cost. The 'compelling state interest' that justifies this constitutional rule is not simply elimination of the inequity arising from the fact that some union activity redounds to the benefit of 'free-riding' nonmembers; private speech often furthers the interests of nonspeakers, and that does not alone empower the state to compel the speech to be paid for. What is distinctive, however, about the 'free riders' [in unions] ... is that ... the law
requires
the union to carry [them]-indeed, requires the union to go
out of its way
to benefit [them], even at the expense of its other interests.... [T]he free ridership (if it were left to be that) would be not incidental but calculated, not imposed by circumstances but mandated by government decree."
Lehnert,
And in other parts of its opinion, the majority itself mimics the point, thus recognizing the core rationale of Abood : What justifies the agency fee, the majority notes, is "the fact that the State compels the union to promote and protect the interests of nonmembers." Ante, at 2636; see ante, at 2638, n. 18. Exactly right; indeed, that is as clear a one-sentence account of Abood 's free-rider rationale as appears in this Court's decisions.
Still, the majority too quickly says, it has no worries in this case: Given that Illinois's caregivers voted to unionize, "it may be presumed that a high percentage of [them] became union members and are willingly paying union dues." Ante, at 2641. But in fact nothing of the sort may be so presumed, given that union supporters (no less than union detractors) have an economic incentive to free ride. See supra, at 2656 - 2657. The federal workforce, on which the majority relies, see ante, at 2640, provides a case in point. There many fewer employees pay dues than have voted for a union to represent them. 7 And why, after all, should that endemic free-riding be surprising? Does the majority think that public employees are immune from basic principles of economics? If not, the majority can have no basis for thinking that absent a fair-share clause, a union can attract sufficient dues to adequately support its functions.
This case in fact offers a prime illustration of how a fair-share agreement may serve important government interests. Recall that Illinois decided that collective bargaining with an exclusive representative of in-home caregivers would enable it to provide improved services through its Rehabilitation Program. See supra, at 2648. The State thought such bargaining would enable it to attract a better and more stable workforce to serve disabled patients, preventing their institutionalization and thereby decreasing total state expenditures. The majority does not deny the State's legitimate interest in choosing to negotiate with an exclusive bargaining agent, in service of administering an effective program. See ante, at 2640 - 2641. But the majority does deny Illinois the means it reasonably deemed appropriate to effectuate that policy-a fair-share provision ensuring that the union has the funds necessary to carry out its responsibilities *2658 on behalf of in-home caregivers. The majority does so against the weight of all precedent, and based on "empirical assumption[s]," ante, at 2634, lacking any foundation. Abood got this matter right; the majority gets it wrong: Illinois has a more than sufficient interest, in managing its workforce and administering the Rehabilitation Program, to require employees to pay a fair share of a union's costs of collective bargaining.
III
For many decades, Americans have debated the pros and cons of right-to-work laws and fair-share requirements. All across the country and continuing to the present day, citizens have engaged in passionate argument about the issue and have made disparate policy choices. The petitioners in this case asked this Court to end that discussion for the entire public sector, by overruling Abood and thus imposing a right-to-work regime for all government employees. The good news out of this case is clear: The majority declined that radical request. The Court did not, as the petitioners wanted, deprive every state and local government, in the management of their employees and programs, of the tool that many have thought necessary and appropriate to make collective bargaining work.
The bad news is just as simple: The majority robbed Illinois of that choice in administering its in-home care program. For some 40 years, Abood has struck a stable balance-consistent with this Court's general framework for assessing public employees' First Amendment claims-between those employees' rights and government entities' interests in managing their workforces. The majority today misapplies Abood, which properly should control this case. Nothing separates, for purposes of that decision, Illinois's personal assistants from any other public employees. The balance Abood struck thus should have defeated the petitioners' demand to invalidate Illinois's fair-share agreement. I respectfully dissent.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See
United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co.,
Although this regulation states clearly that a customer has complete discretion with respect to hiring and firing a personal assistant, the dissent contends that the State also has the authority to end the employment of a personal assistant whose performance is not satisfactory. Nothing in the regulations supports this view. Under 89 Ill. Admin. Code § 677.40(d), the State may stop paying a personal assistant if it is found that the assistant does not meet "the standards established by DHS as found at 89 Ill. Adm.Code 686." These standards are the basic hiring requirements set out in § 686.10, see n. 2, infra . Providing adequate performance after hiring is nowhere mentioned in § 686.10.
It is true, as the dissent notes, post, at 2646, that a personal assistant must provide two written or oral references, see § 686.10(c), but judging the adequacy of these references is the sole prerogative of the customer. See § 676.30(b). And while the regulations say that an applicant must have either previous experience or training, see § 686.10(f), they also provide that a customer has complete discretion to judge the adequacy of training and prior experience. See § 684.20(b) (the customer has complete discretion with respect to hiring and training a personal assistant). See also § 686.10(b) (the customer may hire a minor-even under some circumstances, a person as young as 14); § 686.10(f) (the customer may hire a personal assistant who was never previously employed so long as the assistant has adequate training); § 684.20(b) (criminal record check not required).
The other five petitioners are personal assistants under a similar Illinois program called the "Disabilities Program." See, infra, at 2644, and n. 30.
The employees' First Amendment claim necessarily raised the question of governmental action, since the First Amendment does not restrict private conduct, and the
Hanson
Court, in a brief passage, concluded that governmental action was present. This was so, the Court reasoned, because the union-shop provision of the RLA took away a right that employees had previously enjoyed under state law.
A related question arose in
Keller v. State Bar of Cal.,
Only four Justices fully agreed with this approach, but a fifth, Justice Douglas, went along due to "the practical problem of mustering five Justices for a judgment in this case."
Id
., at 778-779,
Recent experience has borne out this concern. See DiSalvo, The Trouble with Public Sector Unions, National Affairs No. 5, p. 15 (2010) ( "In Illinois, for example, public-sector unions have helped create a situation in which the state's pension funds report a liability of more than $100 billion, at least 50% of it unfunded").
Under § 686.10(h)(9), a personal assistant "may apply for Workers' Compensation benefits through [the State] ... however, ... the customer, not DHS, is the employer for these purposes."
See www2.illinois.gov/cms/Employees/benefits/StateEmployee/Pages/default.
What is significant is not the label that the State assigns to the personal assistants but the substance of their relationship to the customers and the State. Our decision rests in no way on state-law labels. Cf. post, at 2649. Indeed, it is because the First Amendment's meaning does not turn on state-law labels that we refuse to allow the state to make a nonemployee a full-fledged employee "[s]olely for purposes of coverage under the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act," Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 20, § 2405/3(f), through the use of a statutory label.
See
Meat Cutters v. Jewel Tea Co.,
See
In re National Grinding Wheel Co.,
See
In re Singer Manufacturing Co.,
See
Great Southern Trucking Co. v. NLRB,
See
N.K. Parker Transport, Inc.,
See
St. John's Hospital,
Under the current collective-bargaining agreement, a "grievance" is "a dispute regarding the meaning or implementation of a specific provision brought by the Union or a Personal Assistant." App. 51; see also id., at 51-54. "Neither the Union nor the Personal Assistant can grieve the hiring or termination of the Personal Assistant, reduction in the number of hours worked by the Personal Assistant or assigned to the Customer, and/or any action taken by the Customer." Id., at 51. That apparently limits the union's role in grievance adjustments to the State's failure to perform its duties under the collective-bargaining agreement, e.g., if the State were to issue an incorrect paycheck, the union could bring a grievance. See id., at 48
Contrary to the dissent's argument, post, at 2649 - 2650, the scope of the union's bargaining authority has an important bearing on the question whether Abood should be extended to the situation now before us. As we have explained, the best argument that can be mounted in support of Abood is based on the fact that a union, in serving as the exclusive representative of all the employees in a bargaining unit, is required by law to engage in certain activities that benefit nonmembers and that the union would not undertake if it did not have a legal obligation to do so. But where the law withholds from the union the authority to engage in most of those activities, the argument for Abood is weakened. Here, the dissent does not claim that the union's approach to negotiations on wages or benefits would be any different if it were not required to negotiate on behalf of the nonmembers as well as members. And there is no dispute that the law does not require the union to undertake the burden of representing personal assistants with respect to their grievances with customers; on the contrary, the law entirely excludes the union from that process. The most that the dissent can identify is the union's obligation to represent nonmembers regarding grievances with the State, but since most aspects of the personal assistants' work is controlled entirely by the customers, this obligation is relatively slight. It bears little resemblance to the obligation imposed on the union in Abood .
It is therefore unnecessary for us to reach petitioners' argument that
Abood
should be overruled, and the dissent's extended discussion of
stare decisis
is beside the point. Cf.
Stoneridge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.,
The dissent suggests that the concept of joint employment already supplies a clear line of demarcation, see
post,
at 2648 - 2649, but absent a clear statutory definition, employer status is generally determined based on a variety of factors that often do not provide a clear answer. See generally 22 Illinois Jurisprudence: Labor and Employment § 1:02 (2012);
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31 v. State Labor Relations Bd.,
The dissent claims that our refusal to extend Abood to the Rehabilitation Program personal assistants produces a "perverse result" by penalizing the State for giving customers extensive control over the care they receive. Post, at 2650. But it is not at all perverse to recognize that a State may exercise more control over its full-fledged employees than it may over those who are not full-fledged state employees or are privately employed.
A similar statute adopts the same rule specifically as to the U.S. Postal Service. See
Wages rose from $7 per hour in 2003 to $13 per hour in 2014. Brief for Respondent Quinn 7. Current wages, according to respondents, are $11.65 per hour. Brief for Respondent SEIU-HII 6.
See generally Brief for Respondent Quinn 6-8; Brief for Respondent SEIU-HII 6.
See Brief for Respondent Quinn 7.
The
Abood
majority cited
Pickering
once, in a footnote, for the proposition that "there may be limits on the extent to which an employee in a sensitive or policymaking position may freely criticize his superiors and the policies they espouse."
Nor is the State acting as a "proprietor in managing its internal operations" with respect to personal assistants. See
NASA v. Nelson,
The dissent misunderstands or mischaracterizes our cases in this line. We have never held that the wages paid to a public-sector bargaining unit are not a matter of public concern. The $338 payment at issue in Guarnieri had a negligible impact on public coffers, but payments made to public-sector bargaining units may have massive implications for government spending. See supra, at 2632, and n. 7. That is why the dissent's "analogy," post, at 2655 - 2656, is not illustrative at all. We do not doubt that a single public employee's pay is usually not a matter of public concern. But when the issue is pay for an entire collective-bargaining unit involving millions of dollars, that matter affects statewide budgeting decisions.
See Cooper, Bigger Share of State Cash for Medicaid, N.Y. Times, Dec. 14, 2011.
The Court of Appeals held-and we agree-that the First Amendment claims of the petitioners who work, not in the Rehabilitation Program, but in a different but related program, the "Disabilities Program," are not ripe. This latter program is similar in its basic structure to the Rehabilitation Program, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 14a, but the Disabilities Program personal assistants have not yet unionized. The Disabilities Program petitioners claim that under Illinois Executive Order No. 2009-15, they face imminent unionization and, along with it, compulsory dues payments. Executive Order No. 2009-15, they note, is "almost identical to EO 2003-08, except that it targets providers in the Disabilities Program." Brief for Petitioners 10.
In a 2009 mail-ballot election, the Disabilities Program personal assistants voted down efforts by SEIU Local 73 and American Federation State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 to become their representatives. See App. 27. The record before us does not suggest that there are any further elections currently scheduled. Nor does the record show that any union is currently trying to obtain certification through a card check program. Under these circumstances, we agree with the holding of the Court of Appeals.
The majority describes the petitioners as "partial" or "quasi" public employees, a label of its own devising.
Ante,
at 2638. But employment law has a real name-joint employees-for workers subject at once to the authority of two or more employers (a not uncommon phenomenon). See,
e.g.,
Indeed, pursuant to the grievance procedure in the present collective bargaining agreement, the SEIU obtained an arbitration award reversing the State's decision to disqualify an assistant from the program for such reasons. See Brief for Respondent SEIU 7 (citing Doc. No. 32-5 in Case No. 10-cv-02477 (ND Ill.)).
The majority claims that the Court developed this law "for use in other contexts," ante, at 2638 - 2639, n. 20, but that is true only in the narrowest sense. The decisions I cite dealt with First Amendment claims that joint or contract employees made against the government. The only difference is that those suits challenged different restrictions on the employees' expressive activities.
In a related argument, the majority frets that if Abood extends to the joint employees here, a "host of workers who receive payments from a governmental entity for some sort of service would be candidates for inclusion within Abood 's reach." Ante, at 2638. But as I have just shown, this Court has not allowed such worries about line-drawing to limit the government's authority over joint and contract employees in the past. And rightly so, because whatever close cases may arise at the margin (there always are some), the essential distinction between such employees and mere recipients of government funding is not hard to maintain. Consider again the combination of things Illinois does here: set wages, provide benefits, administer payroll, withhold taxes, set minimum qualifications, specify terms of standard contracts, develop individualized service plans, fund orientation and training, facilitate annual reviews, and resolve certain grievances. That combination of functions places the petitioners so securely on one side of the boundary between public employees and mere recipients of public funding as to justify deferral of line-drawing angst to another case.
As the opinion's quadruple repetition of the words "appear" and "apparently" suggests, ante, at 2634 - 2635, the majority is mostly guessing as to in-home caregivers' eligibility for various state programs.
The majority also suggests in this part of its opinion that even if the union had latitude to demand higher wages only for its own supporters, it would not do so. See ante, at 2637, n. 18. But why not? A rational union, in the absence of any legal obligation to the contrary, would almost surely take that approach to bargaining.
See, e.g., R. Kearney & P. Mareschal, Labor Relations in the Public Sector 26 (5th ed. 2014) ("[T]he largest federal union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), represented approximately 650,000 bargaining unit members in 2012, but less than half of them were dues-paying members. All told, out of the approximately 1.9 million full-time federal wage system (blue-collar) and General Schedule (white-collar) employees who are represented by a collective bargaining contract, only one-third actually belong to the union and pay dues").