That's what the Republicans in the Legislature tried to do when they passed the Voluntary Contributions Act in 2001. It would prohibit the state or any local public employer (a city or school district) from withholding voluntary political contributions from its employees' paychecks. The goal was to cripple the ability of public employee unions, particularly the teachers union, to collect contributions that the labor organizations then give to candidates or use in battles like the private school voucher referendum.

Union political funds are the bread and butter of the Democrats.

Get the picture?

Naturally, the unions sued the state, arguing in federal court that the law violates the First Amendment's protection of political speech. If the state makes it more difficult for members to contribute to a union's political funds by barring payroll deductions, it indirectly makes it more difficult for those members to support the union's political messages.

In 2006, the trial court in Salt Lake City ruled for the unions. Last week, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver did the same. Both rightly, in our view.

In the trial court, the state had argued, among other things, that it was trying not to subsidize the process of political contributions, and the state is not required by the First Amendment to use its resources to collect such contributions from its employees. But, the judge pointed out, the state incurs no expense because the employers can require the workers or the union to pay the cost of administering the deductions, which is minimal anyway.

On appeal, the state fell back on arcane legal arguments about how the payroll systems of local governments and school districts are not public forums and so the district court should have applied a lesser standard of First Amendment review. The three-judge panel didn't buy that.

The state also made a half-hearted argument that the law was designed to promote a politically neutral workplace, but the court said that the state supplied no evidence to support that. It's hard to dress up a pig.

This law was bare-knuckles politics, a game that businesses and unions play for keeps. Neither side should be able to use the law, as was the case here, to disarm the other in the political arena.