The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge on Monday to lawyers’ state bar fees, which had been brought after the justices struck down mandatory union dues in a 2018 case citing the First Amendment.
Wisconsin attorneys had sued the state bar over its collection of dues, saying that the First Amendment was violated by forcing them to subsidize the speech of the State Bar of Wisconsin.
They say the legal organization takes positions on matters of public concern including felon voting rights, tax reform, and support for insurance coverage for abortions.
The State Bar of Wisconsin will suspend a lawyer’s license to practice if he or she refuses to pay the dues, which range from $173 to $258.
The Wisconsin lawyers, who brought the case, said the high court ruled in 2018 it was illegal to compel payments from government employees that had been forced to join labor unions that took positions contrary to the employee’s beliefs, so they should also have their mandatory bar dues struck down.
The State Bar of Wisconsin, meanwhile, had alleged the attorneys rushed to the Supreme Court without establishing much of a record in the lower courts on the issue.
“The constitutionality of the State Bar’s integrated structure has been affirmed by this Court, the Seventh Circuit, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court against numerous challenges over the past 75 years,” the state bar argued in court papers.
The high court, siding with the state bar, for now, declined to weigh in on the issue.
Justice Clarence Thomas, though, along with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch disagreed with the move to reject the challenge.
“A majority of states, including Wisconsin, have ’integrated bars,’” Justice Thomas wrote. “Unlike voluntary bar associations, integrated or mandatory bars require attorneys to join a state bar and pay compulsory dues as a condition of practicing law in the state.”
He noted the court overruled decades of precedent in the mandatory union dues case, so it should also reevaluate attorney’s dues.
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