A deeply divided Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the nation’s public employee unions Wednesday that likely will result in a loss of money, members and political muscle.

After three efforts in 2012, 2014 and 2016 fell short, the court’s conservative majority ruled 5-4 that unions cannot collect fees from non-members to help defray the costs of collective bargaining. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the decision, with dissents from Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

About 5 million workers could be affected by the decision overruling the court’s 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education — those who pay dues or “fair-share” fees to unions in 22 states where public employees can be forced to contribute. Workers in 28 states already cannot be forced to join or pay unions.

“We recognize that the loss of payments from nonmembers may cause unions to experience unpleasant transition costs in the short term and may require unions to make adjustments in order to attract and retain members,” Alito wrote. “But we must weigh these disadvantages against the considerable windfall that unions have received under Abood for the past 41 years.”

Kagan’s main dissent for the four liberal justices accused the court of “weaponizing the First Amendment in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy.”

“It wanted to pick the winning side in what should be — and until now has been — an energetic policy debate,” she wrote. “Today, that healthy — that democratic — debate ends. The majority has adjudged who should prevail.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch cast the deciding vote against what conservative opponents have labeled a form of compelled speech. The money helps labor unions maintain political power in some of the nation’s most populous states, including California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Gorsuch, who had remained silent during oral argument in February, was the key because the court had deadlocked in a similar case two years ago following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The newest justice recently authored the court’s 5-4 ruling that denied workers the right to join together in class action lawsuits rather than submit employer-sponsored arbitration.

The ruling completed a 4-for-4 sweep for the Trump administration in which the Justice Department switched sides from the positions taken during the Obama administration. “The favorable Supreme Court decisions in all four cases reflect that we took the proper course of action,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.

The 2016 case challenged a powerful teachers union in California; the new one targeted state employees in Illinois. But the threatened impact was the same: elimination of fees paid by police, firefighters, teachers and other government workers who don’t join the unions that represent them.

The landmark ruling overrules the court’s own 41-year-old precedent, which said workers did not have to pay for unions’ political activity but could be required to contribute to other costs of representation, such as wage and benefit negotiations and grievance procedures.

The court’s decision frees those non-members from the fees, but unions also are braced to lose some dues-paying members who stand to save more under the new rule. That could force unions to raise dues on those who remain.

“It is shameful that the billionaire CEOs and corporate special interests behind this case have succeeded in manipulating the highest court in the land to do their bidding,” leaders of the nation’s four major public employee unions said in a statement. “This case was nothing more than a blatant political attack to further rig our economy and democracy against everyday Americans in favor of the wealthy and powerful.”

The case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, was backed by conservative groups that have tried for years to overturn the court’s 1977 decision upholding the fees for collective bargaining but not for political action.

“Today’s decision is a landmark victory for rights of public-sector employees coast-to-coast that will free millions of teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public employees from mandatory union payments,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

The court ruled 7-2, 5-4 and 4-4 on three similar cases in the past six years, eating away at the 1977 decision without overruling it entirely. In 2016, Scalia’s death a month after oral arguments denied conservatives their fifth vote.

The decision comes at a time when 61% of Americans approve labor unions — the highest rating in Gallup polls since 2003 — and teachers’ strikes have roiled states from West Virginia and Kentucky to Oklahoma, Colorado and Arizona.

“The fictional narrative of labor’s downfall is being upended by the reality working people are creating for ourselves,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said recently. “No matter the outcome of this case, millions of workers will continue to stand together to build a stronger, fairer America.”

It remains unclear what impact the ruling will have on organized labor in general, which has suffered a 70-year decline in union membership. The nation’s roughly 15 million union members make up less than 11% of the workforce, a drop from 35% during World War II. The decline is magnified in the private sector, where only 6.5% of workers remain unionized.

In the public sector, more than one in three workers belong to a union, a percentage that has held relatively steady for decades. AFSCME, the National Education Association, Service Employees International Union and American Federation of Teachers now face a likely loss of members.

Some groups that have fought to end compulsory fees argue that unions can stave off membership declines by better representing workers. They cite data from states such as Indiana and Michigan after the enactment of right-to-work laws.

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The United States Supreme Court ruled Friday that the government cannot monitor people’s movements for weeks or months by tracking the location of their mobile phones without a warrant.

In a ruling that could have broad implications for privacy rights in the digital age, justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum said rapid advances in technology make decades-old rules on data privacy inadequate.

It was another in a series of digital privacy verdicts issued by the high court, following rulings in recent years that police cannot use  GPS equipment to track vehicles or search cellphones without a warrant.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion and was joined by the court’s four liberal justices. He stressed that it was a narrow decision that does not question conventional surveillance techniques and tools, such as security cameras. But he said historical cell-site records raise even greater privacy concerns than GPS monitoring.

“Here the progress of science has afforded law enforcement a powerful new tool to carry out its important responsibilities,” Roberts said.

“While individuals regularly leave their vehicles, they compulsively carry cell phones with them all the time,” he said. “A cell phone faithfully follows its owner beyond public thoroughfares and into private residences, doctor’s offices, political headquarters, and other potentially revealing locales.”

The court’s other conservative justices vehemently disagreed, writing four times as much in their various dissents than Roberts did for the court’s majority.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said the government’s search of cellphone location records was permissible because they were held by the service provider, not the individual. “The court’s new and uncharted course will inhibit law enforcement.”

Justice Samuel Alito called it a “revolutionary” ruling that “guarantees a blizzard of litigation while threatening many legitimate and valuable investigative practices upon which law enforcement has rightfully come to rely.”

The latest case grew out of a series of armed robberies in Michigan and Ohio in 2010 and 2011. To prosecute its case against Timothy Carpenter, the government obtained cellphone records that revealed his approximate location over 127 days, placing him in proximity to the crimes.

The records were obtained under the Stored Communications Act of 1986, which allows phone companies to turn over records if the government has reasonable grounds to believe they will help a criminal investigation. A search warrant requires a tougher standard.

Lower courts upheld the search of cell tower records under the “third-party doctrine,” used in earlier Supreme Court cases to uphold government access to suspects’ bank records and phone numbers called from landlines. Consumers should know that wireless carriers can track them, the theory goes, so their locations are not private.

In 2016, police made some 125,000 requests for cellphone location data from Verizon and AT&T alone, often involving several suspects over periods of months. Courts routinely grant those requests under the 1986 law.

But privacy groups warned that extending the theory to cellphone location data could be a slippery slope leading to exposure of email and text messages, social media communications, Internet browsing histories and the so-called “Internet of Things,” from Siri to Fitbits.

Since 2001, the court has leaned toward protecting privacy from modern technology. That year, it ruled 5-4 that police needed a search warrant to use a thermal imaging device outside a private home to detect the heat required to grow marijuana inside.

Roberts referred to that case a decade later in identifying the clash between privacy and technology as “the real challenge for the next 50 years.”

“What does the Fourth Amendment mean when you can, through technology, literally see through walls with heat imaging?” he said.

If you are seeking aggressive criminal representation by an experienced criminal defense attorney for your Denton County criminal case or arrest in Denton County, contact the offices of Tim Powers today. There is no charge or obligation for the initial consultation. 940.483.8000 Tim Powers is an attorney licensed to practice law by the Supreme Court of Texas. Nothing in this article is intended to be legal advice. For legal advice about any specific legal question you should directly consult an attorney. Criminal Defense Lawyers with Unparalleled Passion for Success Providing Quality Representation for your Denton, Lewisville, Flower Mound, Carrollton, Corinth, Highland Village Dallas, Plano, McKinney, Denton County, or Collin County criminal case

The Department of Justice has filed complaints against 11 individuals believed to be members of the Central American migrant caravan, accusing them of illegally entering the United States, a federal law enforcement official tells CNN.

After a month-long journey by bus, train and on foot, about 100 migrants arrived at the San Ysidro port of entry on the US-Mexico border on Sunday evening, preparing to claim asylum. About 20 to 30 migrants spent the night inside an immigration processing center in Tijuana, Mexico.

An organizer of the caravan vowed they would remain at the immigration processing center until “every last one” is admitted into the United States.

Two Salvadorans, six Hondurans, and three Guatemalans face charges, according to the official. Ten of the individuals face a misdemeanor charge for allegedly entering the US illegally. Another individual is alleged to have entered the US after having been previously deported, and faces a felony charge.

The official says the probable cause statement alleges many of those charged were seen in an area known as Goat Canyon, about 4 miles to the west of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, on the US side of the border. Others were seen on the US side of the border about 2 miles west of San Ysidro in an area known as “W-8.”