Pure Politics :

                                        End Note Links  

 

End Note Links (continued from prior page):

 

[4] Hovde     Elizabeth Hovde, “Court ruling harms rights of teachers,” The Columbian. 

                    March 23, 2006, pg C7.

 

On March 23, 2006, Elizabeth Hovde, columnist and editor for The Columbian, criticized the Majority Opinion of PDC v WEA.  She approved greatly of the Dissenting Opinion, quoting from it, and specifically mentioning its author, Justice Richard Sanders, as so:

 

“As Justice Richard Sanders wrote in dissent, “The majority claims this statute violates the First Amendment associational rights of the union. . . . This argument’s flaw is at its foundation: association is a two way street requiring a mutual desire to associate by all concerned.  But here non-union employees have elected not to associate.  This does not violate the associated rights of the union or its members since it had no constitutional right to compel membership much less monetary support from nonmembers in the first place.”

 

Hovde, however, did not mention the name of the Majority Opinion’s author, Faith Ireland, nor the names of ANY of the other 8 justices or how they had voted on the case. 

 

The failure to simply list Faith Ireland as the Majority Opinion author, in this and perhaps most articles about PDC v WEA, might greatly explain why neither Ms. Hovde, nor any other new or old journalists would “hear any bells” later when the “two former state Supreme Court justices Faith Ireland and Robert Utter”  brought their class action suit against the BIAW, and, via their attorney, demanded that Gubernatorial Candidate Dino Rossi give his deposition before the final day of the 2008 General Election, Nov. 4th. 

 

Simply put, no extensive searches based on the Key Words — Faith and Ireland — even if they were made, would show much of a link to PDC v WEA, which was, by 2008, both old news and a forgotten case, anyway.