The Trump administration is urging the Supreme Court to throw out a decades-old precedent requiring public employees to pay certain fees to unions, The Washington Post reported.
The move aligns the administration with conservative legal activists who maintain the requirement violates the free-speech rights of those who don't want to pay union fees, the newspaper said.
The issue had come before the high court in January 2016, the newspaper noted. The Obama administration had supported the unions in that case. But the court split 4 to 4 in the case after Justice Antonin Scalia died.
The court accepted a new challenge on the issue in September when a child-support specialist for the state of Illinois challenged the American Federation of State, Court and Municipal Employees' ability to collect fees from union nonmembers, Politico said.
The Trump administration has filed a brief with the court siding with the child-support specialist.
"Compelling employees to subsidize speech on politics and public policy imposes a severe burden that even highly restrictive prohibitions on speech in the workplace do not," the brief said.
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