Although the difference between opt-out and opt-in schemes is important, our prior cases have given surprisingly little attention to this distinction. Indeed, acceptance of the opt-out approach appears to have come about more as a historical accident than through the careful application of First Amendment principles. [proceeds to suggest the law as it stands is wrong for a few more pages, then, after his essay on how wrongly decided a bunch of issues not before the Court were:]

By authorizing a union to collect fees from nonmembers and permitting the use of an opt-out system for the collection of fees levied to cover nonchargeable expenses, our prior decisions approach, if they do not cross, the limit of what the First Amendment can tolerate. The SEIU, however, asks us to go farther..."

Look bro, after you've suggested that the whole system of union dues collection is unconstitutional for 5 pages, no one really believes that the reason you're striking this collection down is that it "goes farther"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1975537&forum_id=2#20927538)

"Statements like these don't belong in a majority opinion, unless you think it's appropriate for the Court to signal to litigants that they'd really love someone to bring a test case to overrule a decision they no longer like"

Explain to me slowly and clearly, as though I were a 12 year old child of below-average intelligence, exactly why we should think such signaling within dicta in a majority opinion is wrong/bad.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1975537&forum_id=2#20928338)

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR would apparently have us proceed on the assumption that an opt-out regime is permitted. [yeah, because the Court has said so umpteen times.] She would then have us decide what sort of opt-out procedures would be sufficient if such a regime were allowed at all. But that is a question that simply cannot be answered. It would be like asking what sort of procedural requirements would be required if the government set out to do something else that the First Amendment flatly prohibits— for example, requiring prepublication approval of newspapers. [omg so the precedents you said you weren't overruling, just lightly questioning, allow something akin, in your view, to prepublication approval of newspapers.]

There is also no merit in JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR’s and JUSTICE BREYER’s comments about prior precedent. This case concerns the procedures that must be followed when a public-sector union announces a special assessment or mid-year dues increase. No prior decision of this Court has addressed that question, and Hudson says not one word on the subject. [in other news, Hudson didn't decide whether you need opt-in procedures if an employee has red hair. NOT ONE WORD on the subject.]

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1975537&forum_id=2#20927603)