Labor & Employment Law

Volunteer Police Officers Do Not Have Any 1st Amendment Right To Collectively Bargain Or Any Due Process Rights

By Harvey Randall, Esq.

Volunteer Police Officers Do Not Have Any 1st Amendment Right To Collectively Bargain Or Any Due Process Rights
Source: Adjunct Law Prof Blog; http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/adjunctprofs/

Reproduced with permission. Copyright © 2008, Mitchell H. Rubinstein, Esq., Adjunct Professor of Law, St. Johns Law School and New York Law School, All rights reserved.

Griffith v. Lanier, ___F.3d___(D.C. Cir. April 4, 2008), is an important employment law case because it demonstrates once again that volunteers are not treated as employees under our nation's employment laws. Plaintiffs brought a First Amendment challenge to volunteer police officers enabling legislation that specifically stated that they did not have the right to engage in collective bargaining. Why? Because the First Amendment does not protect the right to engage in collective bargaining. As the court stated:

This narrower reading of the General Order leaves the plaintiffs? First Amendment rights intact (as they themselves concede, see Griffith Br. 26), for while ?the Constitution guarantees workers the right individually or collectively to voice their views to their employers, . . . [it] does not afford such employees the right to compel employers to engage in a
dialogue or even to listen.? Babbitt v. United Farm Workers Nat?l Union, 442 U.S. 289, 313 (1979) (citations omitted).

Thus the clause survives the plaintiffs? facial challenge. The plaintiffs also challenged their at will status under the Due Process Clause. That challenge also failed because plaintiffs did not have a property interest in their positions.

For those interested, I wrote a law review article on the status of volunteers. Our Nation's Forgotton Workers; The Unprotected Volunteers, 9 U. Pa. J. Lab. & Emp. L. 147 ( Fall 2006).

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on April 09, 2008 (boomark / email).