SPRINGFIELD – State Senator Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of Mark Janus today, dealing a major blow to unions across the country:

“I had hoped that a conservative Supreme Court would hew to the bedrock conservative law and economics principles I learned at the University of Chicago Law School, but it would seem Bruce Rauner’s obsessive anti-union agenda has inspired them to liberal judicial activism.  

“The law should not support economic “free riders”—those who benefit from services for which they do not pay.  The Janus decision is an affront to that principle. It allows workers to reap the benefits of collective bargaining without paying for the efforts it takes.

“Republicans in Congress fought hard to delay hearings and deny Barack Obama his Supreme Court pick, and they were not disappointed today. It’s a shame that the U.S. Supreme Court is now, like Congress, just another appendage of the Trump White House.  So much for the brilliant separation of powers the framers laid out in the Constitution.”