To some, the actions of the Connecticut legislature that enabled a child care providers union in Connecticut might appear to add momentum to SEIU and AFCSME’s national campaign to conscript family child care business owners into becoming card-carrying dues-paying union members of these two unions.  
 
Just weeks earlier, however, Governor Paul LePage (R-Maine) signed a bill repealing a 2008 law that sanctioned a union for family child care providers who receive state subsidies. Adding to the confusion, Governor Jerry Brown (D-Calif.) vetoed a bill establishing a union last fall.
 
The back and forth makes it difficult even for those with a vested interest to track who has the advantage in what’s become the front line in the fight over holding the line on or increasing the ranks of state public employee unions.
 
A little publicized federal court case being heard on Tuesday in US District Court in Minneapolis, however, takes the divisive issue away from state lawmakers and propels it to the national level, with the potential to end or embolden what some call compulsory unionization, once and for all.