US Supreme Court decision coming soon

Bob Williams, founder and President of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, was in Bellingham to brief friends and supporters on February 28th. The EFF has been prominently featured in national media because their long-running legal battle with the Washington Education Association escalated to oral arguments before the US Supreme Court on January 10th.

At issue in the EFF-WEA legal battle is the teacher union's assertion that non-union teachers be compelled to pay a portion of their mandatory dues to support union political initiatives.

Williams briefed Bellingham supporters on details of the high court oral arguments, and the pressure-packed questioning to which union lawyers and Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna were subjected. Soi disant pundits and mainstream media as "prominent" as the New York Times have described this case as "one of the most important to be considered by the high court this term."

While it is always difficult to forecast how the Supreme Court will decide any given case based on the dialog during oral arguments, Williams said the justices seemed particularly tough on the union representatives. Supporting this assessment is the fact that majority Democrats in the Washington House and Senate have introduced bills (HB-2079) to effectively preempt a ruling against the WEA, even before one is announced by the Supreme Court. The bills further declare this preemption to be an "emergency," thereby exempting it from being overturned by any repeal initiative that might subsequently be approved by voters.

"We may have to litigate those bills too," said Williams. He expressed some hope that the "emergency" status of such bills may be stricken during State Senate consideration, saying "it's clear that this is not an emergency."

The EFF is also active in a number of other areas, in addition to issues of financing union political action. Williams sees the academic ineffectiveness of American public education as a major problem, especially in science, technology and mathematics. He cites numerous statistics of per-student spending, drop-out and graduation rates, performance on standardized tests, percentage of matriculating college students requiring remedial courses, and proportions of US students enrolling in scientific graduate programs to support his arguments for school vouchers that would permit parents to transfer their children to better schools.

Election integrity is a high EFF priority, with Williams expressing strong reservations about vote-by-mail systems, because "we can't be sure who's voting."

Performance audits of state operations were strongly pushed by EFF in recent years, and Williams described how EFF continues to press for their effective deployment. Governor Gregoire recently had to intervene with two large state departments to remind them to cooperate with new performance audits.

Williams expressed optimism that the conservative and libertarian perspectives advocated by the EFF are resonating with an increasing audience in Washington. Of the 4.8 million total potentially-eligible voters in Washington, Williams notes that 2.1 million cast ballots in the last US Senate contest. He sees the 2.7 million who did not vote as fertile prospects for his political philosophy.

(Abstracted from a story submitted for publication in the Whatcom Independent.)