The United States Supreme Court said today that workers who indirectly receive state funds for taking care of the disabled or elderly cannot be forced to pay union dues.

The Justices ruled 5-4 in favor of an Illinois mom and a group of Illinois personal care assistants who said their First Amendment rights of free speech and free association had been violated by a forced unionization.

The case, Harris v. Quinn, was similar to a scheme in Michigan in which the Service Employees International Union took more than $34 million from the elderly and disabled who received Medicaid money from the state.

In arguing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote: "This case presents the question whether the First Amendment permits a State to compel personal care providers to subsidize speech on matters of public concern by a union that they do not wish to join or support. We hold that it does not, and we therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals."

The case originated in Illinois in 2010 when Pamela Harris and seven other personal care providers (home-based caregivers) who provided in-home assistance to the disabled or elderly and received subsidies from Medicaid for payment challenged a forced unionization scheme in their state. Like in Michigan, the unions involved in Illinois took a cut of the Medicaid money being sent to the patients.

Harris and the others who filed the case were represented by the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy along with the Cato Institute and the National Federation of Independent Business filed an amicus brief in January 2012 asking the Supreme Court to hear the Harris v. Quinn case.

The Mackinac Center in November then filed a separate amicus brief with the Supreme Court that discussed the 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education decision that said union shops were legal in the public sector.

"As a matter of Constitutional law, these kinds of things can't happen again in Michigan or anywhere in the country," said Patrick Wright, vice president of legal affairs for the Mackinac Center. "And it means that the 'dues skim' that the SEIU set up in Michigan was unconstitutional."

The forced unionization of home-based caregivers has occurred across the country. In Michigan, the SEIU Healthcare Michigan orchestrated a scheme in 2005 that locked more than 40,000 workers into the union. Those workers were largely taking care of family and friends and most didn't even vote in the mail-in unionization election.

The scheme finally was disbanded last year. The SEIU, however, went to great lengths to try to keep the skim alive. It relied on reticence from the Legislature to act and had some cooperation from Republicans in leadership positions to delay action. The SEIU also tried to get its scheme locked into the Michigan Constitution. Proposal 4 on last November's ballot would have done just that, but voters defeated it by 14 percentage points.

Earlier this year, the SEIU was fined nearly $200,000 for concealing that it bankrolled the ballot proposal. 

Before the decision, the Heritage Institute's Andrew Grossman said the problem with unionizing home-based caregivers is considering they are state employees.

" … the public 'employees' at issue are not hired or fired by the state, are not supervised by the state, and do not work in state facilities," Grossman wrote. "Attempts by Illinois and other states to claim home-care workers as their own employees for collective bargaining purposes are a pretext unsupported by any legitimate state interest and should be rejected as violating dissenting workers’ First Amendment rights."

The Supreme Court agreed.

(Editor's note: Come back to Michigan Capitol Confidential throughout the day for updates to this story and for more coverage of the case.)

Michigan's 51^st Circuit Court has ruled that Mason County was justified in determining that wind turbines at the Lake Winds Industrial Wind Plant near Ludington are too noisy.

In his June 16 decision, Judge Richard Cooper denied Consumer Energy's appeal to have the court overturn the county's finding that the wind plant was exceeding the county's established decibel level limits.

In a highly technical explanation, Judge Cooper said it was reasonable for the county to take into account the impact of maximum wind speeds that are not outside the norm. He also rejected the argument that excessive noise levels occurring only during certain periods of time should be allowed.

Lake Winds is a 56-turbine facility located south of Ludington. It was the utility company's first wind plant project in Michigan. Residents who live near the $255 million plant began complaining of health problems shortly after the turbines began operating. They filed a lawsuit on April 1, 2013, arguing that noise, vibrations and flickering lights emanating from the wind plant were adversely affecting their health. Among the symptoms noted in the lawsuit were dizziness, sleeplessness and headaches.

In September 2013, the Mason County Planning Commission determined that the wind plant was not in compliance with safety guidelines. CMS Energy, which is the parent company of Consumers Energy, then appealed that decision to the Mason County Zoning Board of Appeals and lost. In January, CMS took the case to court and it has now lost again.

CMS spokesman Dennis Marvin said the utility has yet to decide whether it will appeal Judge Cooper's decision to the Michigan Court of Appeals.

"Obviously, we were disappointed by the decision,” Marvin said. "We are still evaluating whether or not to appeal. In accordance with the court's ruling we are cooperating with Mason County on our mitigation plan."

Mason County has hired experts to continue tests at the wind plant. However, because wind speeds are generally low in the summer the testing isn't likely to resume until September, at the earliest. Under the mitigation plan, affected wind turbines are now operating at reduced power levels to lower the sound level.

"CMS energy has no one to blame but themselves," said Kevon Martis, director of the Interstate Informed Citizens Coalition, a non-profit organization that is concerned about the construction of wind turbines in the region. "The citizens living inside Lake Winds wind plant paid for independent noise studies of the project before it was built. Independent analysis demonstrated that the turbines would not only exceed the noise ordinance as proposed by CMS and adopted by Mason County but that the turbine noise would create widespread complaints and result in legal action by those subjected to this industrial development in a rural environment."

Lake Winds is part of the utility's effort to meet Michigan's renewable energy mandate, which requires that 10 percent of the state's energy be produced by in-state renewable sources by 2015. Though the mandate was ostensibly aimed at reducing carbon emissions, the 2008 law did not require that emissions be monitored to measure the mandate's actual impact. 

"This should be a warning that there is a price to be paid for ignoring the clear acoustical science that predicted this social disaster long before the first shovel of dirt was ever turned," Martis said.

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See also:

Utility Asks Court To Slap Down Excessive Wind Turbine Noise Finding

Michigan's Renewable Energy Mandate Causing Harm, Probably Unconstitutional

Energy Company At Odds With County Over Safety of Wind Turbines

Lawsuit Alleges Wind Power A Threat To Health and Safety

Most of Michigan Is 'Poor' or 'Marginal' For Wind Energy

Effort In Lansing To Override Voters' Rebuke of Higher-Cost Energy Mandate