Add The California Post on Google A California county is trying to force businesses to pay dues to a trade association they may not support — just like unions that once forced workers to join and to pay dues.
And the precedent could hurt businesses across the Golden State.
Most Californians have never heard of Flying Goat Cellars, a family winery in Lompoc. They should.
I have spent plenty of time tasting my way through Los Olivos, Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley over the years, and I’ve had Flying Goat’s wine.
These are not faceless corporations. They are small businesses where the owner may be the person pouring your tasting flight and telling you the story behind the bottle.
That makes Santa Barbara County’s newest mandate so troubling.
Last year, Santa Barbara County’s Board of Supervisors created a Wine Business Improvement District. Wineries selling directly to consumers must pay a 1% assessment on their sales.
Another tax? Nobody is shocked when California finds a new way to take more money.
What makes this so insidious is that it isn’t a tax in the traditional sense. The money doesn’t fund roads, police, parks or public programs. It funds the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association, a private trade organization that controls how the money is spent.
But even that isn’t the whole problem. The issue is compulsion.
Wineries don’t just pay the assessment — they must join the association, too.
No opt out. No choice. Pay the assessment. Join the organization. Fund the speech.
Flying Goat Cellars disagrees with the association’s priorities, marketing strategy and advocacy efforts. Santa Barbara County says that doesn’t matter.
As Flying Goat co-owner Kate Griffith put it in a recent interview, “[I]t’s just absurd that we are having to opt-in without a choice.”
The legal question is straightforward: Can government force a business owner to financially support speech he or she disagrees with? Can government compel membership in a private organization against someone’s wishes?
The Goldwater Institute argues the answer to both questions is no. Goldwater is a national public-interest legal organization that takes cases where government has overreached, and ordinary citizens or small businesses need serious legal firepower.
Goldwater attorney Adam Shelton put it this way: “The Supreme Court has consistently held that private businesses and individuals cannot be forced to subsidize the speech of other private businesses. But that’s exactly what’s happening here.”
Goldwater has filed suit in federal court against Santa Barbara County and the Vintners Association on behalf of Flying Goat Cellars and its owners.
The lawsuit argues that forcing wineries to fund a private trade association violates First Amendment protections against compelled speech and freedom of association. It also raises Fifth Amendment concerns about redirecting private money to a private organization.
Supporters argue the district benefits everyone through regional marketing. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. That is not the issue.
The issue is whether government gets to make that decision for you.
This should concern every California business owner: it isn’t staying in Santa Barbara County.
Similar wine districts already exist in Temecula, Livermore, Lodi, Amador County and the Santa Cruz Mountains. More regions are watching closely.
That is how government programs spread in California. One county tries something. Another copies it. A third expands it. Soon everyone acts as though it has always existed.
Government has an unfortunate habit of treating successful revenue mechanisms the same way viruses treat hosts. They replicate.
If this lawsuit fails, don’t expect this to stay confined to wineries. Every struggling trade association in California will notice: mandatory membership, guaranteed funding and government enforcement.
But something may finally end this scheme before it becomes the next California industry standard.
One winery owner in Santa Barbara County was willing to become a plaintiff.
That matters, because constitutional rights mean very little if only billion-dollar corporations can afford to defend them.
And in my opinion, Flying Goat Cellars is likely to prevail.
The Supreme Court has already told government it cannot force someone to subsidize another party’s speech just because officials believe that speech serves a worthy purpose — that was the core holding in Janus v. AFSCME, when the Court struck down mandatory union agency fees for public employees in 2018.
If that principle held for a government worker’s paycheck, it is hard to see why it should bend for a small winery’s cash register.
A 1% cut of a family business’s sales, sent to a trade group whose marketing priorities that business rejects, is compelled subsidization with a different letterhead.
No lawsuit is guaranteed, but this one deserves to win. Because if government can force wineries to join organizations today, there is very little preventing government from forcing other businesses to do the same tomorrow.
Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com
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