"Two years ago, the Supreme Court heard a case with bleak implications for the country’s labor movement. A California teacher named Rebecca Friedrichs decided she didn’t want to pay fees to the union that represented her because she didn’t want it funding liberal causes. So she sued. If the Court ruled in her favor, which no one doubted it would, public employees could choose to stop paying such fees, potentially triggering a vicious cycle of membership flight and financial ruin. But then Justice Antonin Scalia died in his sleep on a ranch in West Texas and the case ended in a 4-4 deadlock. The fees would remain; the unions were spared. At least for a while."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/how-gorsuch-became-the-second-most-polarizing-man-in-d-c.html