## Facts

- Wisconsin enacted 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, which significantly revised public-sector labor relations.
- Act 10 created two categories of employees: “public safety employees” and “general employees,” treating them differently for labor-relations purposes.
- For general employees, Act 10 limited collective bargaining largely to base wages, imposed annual union recertification requiring majority support of all employees in the unit, and barred payroll deduction of union dues.
- Public safety employees were exempted from many of these restrictions and retained broader bargaining and dues-deduction access.
- Public-sector unions representing general employees sued state officials, alleging that Act 10’s bargaining limits, recertification requirements, and dues-deduction ban violated the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause.
- The district court upheld most of Act 10, but invalidated the recertification requirement and the dues-deduction ban, and denied a motion by individual employees to intervene.
- The state appealed the invalidation of recertification and dues deduction; the unions cross-appealed on the broader constitutional challenges; proposed intervenors appealed the denial of intervention.

## Issues

1. Whether limiting collective bargaining subjects for general employees violates the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause.
2. Whether the annual recertification requirement for general-employee unions violates the First Amendment or equal protection.
3. Whether denying payroll deduction of dues for general-employee unions, while allowing it for public-safety unions, violates the First Amendment or equal protection.
4. Whether the denial of intervention to individual public employees was an abuse of discretion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit largely upheld Act 10 and reversed the district court’s invalidation of the recertification and dues-deduction provisions.
- The court held that the Act’s collective-bargaining limitations for general employees did not violate the First Amendment and survived equal-protection review.
- The court upheld the annual recertification requirement as a permissible condition on a state-created representational status.
- The court upheld the dues-deduction restriction, treating payroll deduction as a state-administered assistance mechanism the state may withhold.
- The court rejected the equal-protection challenge to the public-safety/general-employee distinction under rational-basis review.
- The court affirmed denial of intervention because the proposed intervenors’ interests were adequately represented and intervention was not warranted.

## Legal Principles

- The First Amendment does not create a constitutional right to collective bargaining or to a preferred statutory bargaining framework for public employees.
- A state may expand, restrict, or eliminate public-sector bargaining mechanisms without violating the First Amendment, absent an independent burden on protected speech or association.
- Payroll deduction of union dues is a government-provided service; the government generally has no First Amendment obligation to subsidize or facilitate private speech by providing it.
- Unions’ ability to exist, organize, and advocate through other channels weighs against finding that withdrawal of bargaining-related benefits is a speech or association penalty.
- Differential treatment of public-employee groups in labor policy typically receives rational-basis review where no suspect class or fundamental right is implicated; political motivation alone does not trigger heightened scrutiny.
- Recertification and exclusive-representative status are statutory privileges that may be conditioned or withdrawn, so long as the state does not otherwise violate independent constitutional protections.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit upheld Wisconsin Act 10’s major changes to public-sector labor relations, ruling that neither collective-bargaining powers nor payroll dues deduction are constitutionally required and that the statute’s differential treatment of public-safety and general employees satisfied rational-basis equal-protection review, while also affirming denial of intervention.


Wis. Educ. Ass’n Council v. Walker, 705 F.3d 640 (7th Cir. 2013)