Right-wing groups sue to force states to ban unions

When Hitler enacted a so-called "right-to-work" law in Germany, it didn't take long before he outlawed labor unions completely.

A ban on unions is the ultimate goal of America's right-to-scab movement. Just recently, I was thinking about the Tea Party's recent interest in "right-to-work" laws, and I suspected that pretty soon they were going to start suing states to force them to enact such laws if they didn't already have one. (In Kentucky lately, we've seen how the unelected Tea Party legislates through the courts.) Already, something very similar is happening.

With the graying of America, more and more home health aides will be needed, and some states have rightly been making it easier for these workers to unionize. Connecticut, Illinois, Minnesota, and Vermont are among them. After all, workers have a constitutional right to join unions and freely bargain.

But the Far Right is suing in some states to try to gut this right.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the National Right to Work Legal Foundation - 2 extremist groups - are suing Illinois and Minnesota, demanding that the courts overturn laws that allow health aides to unionize. They've taken one case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Well, that's a first.

What Congress needs to do to stem these frivolous lawsuits is make it illegal for lawyers involved in filing union-busing suits to collect legal fees. More urgently, Congress or the President must strengthen the ability of health aides to join unions.