The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 29 U.S.C. § 141-197, better known as the Taft–Hartley Act, is a United States federal law that restricts the activities and power of labor unions. The act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert A. Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr., and became law despite U.S. President Harry S. Truman's veto on June 23, 1947. Labor leaders called it the "slave-labor bill" while President Truman argued that it was a "dangerous intrusion on free speech", arguing that it would "conflict with important principles of our democratic society". Nevertheless, after it passed Truman relied upon it in twelve instances during his presidency. The Taft–Hartley Act amended the National Labor Relations Act, which Congress passed in 1935. The principal author of the Taft–Hartley Act was J. Mack Swigert, of the Cincinnati law firm Taft, Stettinius & Hollister.
Adair v. United States, 208 U.S. 161 (1908), was a US labor law case of the United States Supreme Court which declared that bans on "yellow-dog" contracts were unconstitutional. The decision reaffirmed the doctrine of freedom of contract which was first recognized by the Court in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897). For this reason, Adair is often seen as defining what has come to be known as the Lochner era, a period in American legal history in which the Supreme Court tended to invalidate legislation aimed at regulating business.
Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court wherein the court redefined its definition of obscenity from that of "utterly without socially redeeming value" to that which lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". It is now referred to as the three-prong standard or the Miller test, with the third prong being informally known by the initialism and mnemonic device "SLAPS" or the term "SLAPS test".
Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), is a U.S. constitutional law Supreme Court case on campaign finance. A majority of judges held that limits on election spending in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 §608 are unconstitutional. In a per curiam opinion, they ruled that expenditure limits contravene the First Amendment provision on freedom of speech because a restriction on spending for political communication necessarily reduces the quantity of expression. It limited disclosure provisions and limited the Federal Election Commission's power. Justice Byron White dissented in part and wrote that Congress had legitimately recognized unlimited election spending "as a mortal danger against which effective preventive and curative steps must be taken".
Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513 (1958), was a U.S. Supreme Court case addressing the State of California's refusal to grant to ACLU lawyer Lawrence Speiser, a veteran of World War II, a tax exemption because that person refused to sign a loyalty oath as required by a California law enacted in 1954. The court reversed a lower court ruling that the loyalty oath provision did not violate the appellants' First Amendment rights.
United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc., 513 U.S. 64 (1994), was a federal criminal prosecution filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles against X-Citement Video and its owner Rubin Gottesman. The charge was trafficking in child pornography, specifically videos featuring the underaged Traci Lords. Gottesman had been sentenced to one year in jail and a $100,000 fine.
United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, 529 U.S. 803 (2000), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court struck down Section 505 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which required that cable television operators completely scramble or block channels that are "primarily dedicated to sexually-oriented programming" from 10 pm to 6 am.
United States v. Congress of Industrial Organizations, 335 U.S. 106 (1948), is a US labor law decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that a labor union's publication of a statement that advocated for its members to vote for a certain candidate for Congress did not violate the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, as amended by the 1947 Labor Management Relations Act.
Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990), is a United States corporate law case of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Michigan Campaign Finance Act, which prohibited corporations from using treasury money to make independent expenditures to support or oppose candidates in elections, did not violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court upheld the restriction on corporate speech, stating, "Corporate wealth can unfairly influence elections"; however, the Michigan law still allowed the corporation to make such expenditures from a segregated fund.
A tax protester is someone who refuses to pay a tax claiming that the tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid. Tax protesters are different from tax resisters, who refuse to pay taxes as a protest against a government or its policies, or a moral opposition to taxation in general, not out of a belief that the tax law itself is invalid. The United States has a large and organized culture of people who espouse such theories. Tax protesters also exist in other countries.
Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Washington, 461 U.S. 540 (1983), was a case before the United States Supreme Court.
United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers, 413 U.S. 548 (1973), is a ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Hatch Act of 1939 does not violate the First Amendment, and its implementing regulations are not unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.
United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), is a 4-to-3 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Hatch Act of 1939, as amended in 1940, does not violate the First, Fifth, Ninth, or Tenth amendments to U.S. Constitution.
Waters v. Churchill, 511 U.S. 661 (1994), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees in the workplace. By a 7–2 margin the justices held that it was not necessary to determine what a nurse at a public hospital had actually said while criticizing a supervisor's staffing practices to coworkers, as long as the hospital had formed a reasonable belief as to the content of her remarks and reasonably believed that they could be disruptive to its operations. They vacated a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in her favor, and ordered the case remanded to district court to determine instead if the nurse had been fired for the speech or other reasons, per the Court's ruling two decades prior in Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle.
Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan, 564 U.S. 117 (2011), was a Supreme Court of the United States decision in which the Court held that the Nevada Ethics in Government Law, which required government officials recuse in cases involving a conflict of interest, is not unconstitutionally overbroad. Specifically, the law requires government officials to recuse themselves from advocating for and voting on the passage of legislation if private commitments to the interests of others materially affect the official's judgment. Under the terms of this law, the Nevada Commission on Ethics censured city councilman Michael Carrigan for voting on a land project for which his campaign manager was a paid consultant. Carrigan challenged his censure in court and the Nevada Supreme Court ruled in his favor, claiming that casting his vote was protected speech. The Supreme Court reversed, ruling that voting by a public official on a public matter is not First Amendment speech.
Heffernan v. City of Paterson, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in 2016 concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees. By a 6–2 margin, the Court held that a public employee's constitutional rights might be violated when an employer, believing that the employee was engaging in what would be protected speech, disciplines them because of that belief, even if the employee did not exercise such a constitutional right.
FEC v. National Conservative PAC, 470 U.S. 480 (1985), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States striking down expenditure prohibitions of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), which regulates the fundraising and spending in political campaigns. The FECA is the primary law that places regulations on campaign financing by limiting the amount that may be contributed. The Act established that no independent political action committee may contribute more than $1,000 to any given presidential candidate in support of a campaign.
Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, No. 16-1466, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), was a landmark US labor law United States Supreme Court case concerning the power of labor unions to collect fees from non-union members. Under the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947, which applies to the private sector, union security agreements can be allowed by state law. The Supreme Court ruled that such union fees in the public sector violate the First Amendment right to free speech, overturning the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that had previously allowed such fees.
California Bankers Assn. v. Shultz, 416 U.S. 21 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Bank Secrecy Act passed by Congress in 1970, requiring banks to record all transactions and report certain domestic and foreign transactions of high dollar amounts to the United States Treasury, did not violate the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
