Abood v. Detroit Board of Education

Abood v. Detroit Board of Education
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 9, 1976 Decided May 23, 1977
Full case name	D. Louis Abood v. Detroit Board of Education
Docket no.	75-1153
Citations	431 U.S. 209 (more) 97 S. Ct. 1782; 52 L. Ed. 2d 261; 1977 U.S. LEXIS 91
Argument	Oral argument
Opinion announcement	Opinion announcement
Case history
Prior	60 Mich. App. 92, 230 N.W.2d 322 (1975); probable jurisdiction noted, 425 U.S. 949 (1976).
Subsequent	Rehearing denied, 433 U.S. 915 (1977).
Holding
"Agency shop" clause whereby every employee represented by a union, even though not a union member, must pay to the union, as a condition of employment, a service charge equal in amount to union dues, was valid insofar as the service charges are used to finance expenditures by the union for collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment purposes.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Thurgood Marshall Harry Blackmun · Lewis F. Powell Jr. William Rehnquist · John P. Stevens
Case opinions
Majority	Stewart, joined by Brennan, White, Marshall, Rehnquist, Stevens
Concurrence	Rehnquist
Concurrence	Stevens
Concurrence	Powell (in judgment), joined by Burger, Blackmun
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I
Overruled by
Janus v. AFSCME (2018)

Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), was a US labor law case where the United States Supreme Court upheld the maintaining of a union shop in a public workplace. Public school teachers in Detroit had sought to overturn the requirement that they pay fees equivalent to union dues on the grounds that they opposed public sector collective bargaining and objected to the political activities of the union. In a unanimous decision, the Court affirmed that the union shop, legal in the private sector, is also legal in the public sector. They found that non-members may be assessed agency fees to recover the costs of "collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment purposes" while insisting that objectors to union membership or policy may not have their dues used for other ideological or political purposes.^[1]

Abood was overturned in the 2018 case Janus v. AFSCME, which found that Abood had failed to properly assess the First Amendment principles in its decision.