The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned another judge’s ruling in Hardin Fiscal Court case relating to right-to-work laws.
The opinion released Friday overturns the lower court decision in this first test case regarding whether county government, as a subset of state government, individually could enact right-to-work rules.
Friday’s decision preserves the long-standing legal principal that a state has absolute discretion in how it chooses to exercise its governmental powers and can delegate to a political subdivision, that same authority.
As a result, the plaintiffs would need to seek permission from the U.S. Supreme Court for further review of the decision and county government now is free to enforce its right-to-work ordinance.
Fiscal Court enacted an ordinance in January 2015 that prohibited companies from mandating that employees deduct part of their wages to contribute to a union. When enacted, unions fought back with several filing lawsuits seeking to invalidate the action claiming it was unconstitutional and violated the National Labor Relations Act.
U.S. District Court Judge David Hale handed down a decision in the case in February this year, siding with the unions. His opinion said that the primary issue was whether it was legal for local governments to make such a decision.
The county’s counsel, John Lovett of Frost Brown Todd LLC, appealed the decision and it has since been in the hands of the federal court of appeals.
Source: NE
You must be logged in to post a comment.