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Camille Bourque v. Engineers and Architects Association, et al.

Paid petition · United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, No. 23-55369 · judgment April 2, 2024


Certiorari denied · November 25, 2024
Pre-decision estimate: 7% cert probability (95% interval 5%–10%)

Before the decision, about 1.7× the 4.1% base rate. The model weighted this up for a Ninth Circuit decision below, a circuit split argued in the petition, and a petition filed soon after the judgment below.

Questions presented

This petition concerns conduct substantively identical to the conduct this Court considered in Janus v. Am. Fed’n of State, Cnty., & Mun. Employees, Council 31, 585 U.S. 878, 920-30 (2018). Petitioner Camille Bourque was a nonmember who did not affirmatively consent to union deductions from her wages. Nevertheless, a union, through a government employer, forced her to pay not only agency fees, but full union dues. However, instead of applying the Janus case and finding that Bourque’s speech was unconstitutionally compelled, the Ninth Circuit declined to apply any constitutional scrutiny to the union or employer’s actions. The court reasoned that the statutory system operating here, in which a union instructs a public employer to take deductions from an employee’s wages and give it to the union, does not give rise to a claim pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The questions presented are:

  1. Is the First Amendment violated when a union causes a government employer to seize full union dues from the wages of a nonconsenting employee?

  2. May a union avoid Section 1983 liability when taking full union dues from nonconsenting public employees by claiming the union “misused” its statutory authority? (i)

Counsel of record

For petitioner
Timothy Ray Snowball
Freedom Foundation

For respondent
Lisa Charlotte Demidovich
Bush Gottlieb, ALC

Case

Conference history
Distributed for 2 conferences

Amicus briefs
1 cert-stage

Proceedings

  1. Nov 25 2024
    Petition DENIED.
  2. Nov 20 2024
    Reply of petitioner Camille Bourque filed. (Distributed)
  3. Nov 06 2024
    DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 11/22/2024.
  4. Oct 21 2024
    Brief of respondent City of Los Angeles, California, in opposition filed.
  5. Oct 21 2024
    Brief of respondents Engineers and Architects Association, et al. in opposition filed.
  6. Oct 21 2024
    Brief of respondent Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California in opposition filed.
  7. Sep 05 2024
    Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is extended to and including October 21, 2024, for all respondents.
  8. Sep 04 2024
    Reply in support of the motion to extend the time to file a response filed.
  9. Aug 29 2024
    Response to motion to extend the time to file a response from petitioner filed.
  10. Aug 27 2024
    Motion to extend the time to file a response from September 19, 2024 to October 21, 2024, submitted to The Clerk.
  11. Aug 20 2024
    Response Requested. (Due September 19, 2024)
  12. Aug 14 2024
    DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 9/30/2024.
  13. Aug 02 2024
    Brief amicus curiae of National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Inc. filed.
  14. Jul 16 2024
    Waiver of right of respondent California Attorney General Rob Bonta to respond filed.
  15. Jul 16 2024
    Waiver of right of respondent Engineer and Architects Association to respond filed.
  16. Jul 16 2024
    Waiver of right of respondent City of Los Angeles to respond filed.
  17. Jul 01 2024
    Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due August 2, 2024)