The U.S. Supreme Court case Harris v. Quinn (2013) revolved around the issue of whether non-union home healthcare workers in Illinois, who were paid by Medicaid, could be required to pay union fees as part of a collective bargaining agreement between the state and a public employees' union. The plaintiffs argued that this requirement violated their First Amendment rights because it compelled them to financially support political speech with which they disagreed. In 2014, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs by a 5-4 margin, holding that these partial-public employees couldn't be forced to contribute union dues because they weren't full-fledged public sector employees but rather private caregivers who worked for individual patients and received state funding indirectly through Medicaid.

In the dissenting opinion for Harris v. Quinn, Justice Elena Kagan argued that the majority's decision was a departure from established precedent and threatened to undermine public sector unions. She contended that home health care workers, who were classified as state employees only for collective bargaining purposes under Illinois law, should be treated like any other public employees when it comes to union representation and dues collection. According to her view, these workers benefited from collective bargaining in terms of improved wages and working conditions; therefore they should share in its costs through agency fees (also known as "fair-share" fees). The majority's ruling against this principle not only contradicted previous decisions upholding such arrangements but also risked destabilizing many existing labor contracts across the country by encouraging free-riding on union services without contributing financially towards them.