A federal appellate court on Friday rejected a First Amendment challenge to North Dakota's mandatory bar association.

A three-judge panel of the U.S.Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that there was no constitutional violation in the bar association's procedures for collecting members' dues and that attorney Arnold Fleck's First Amendment association claim failed because he forfeited the issue in the district court.

The panel actually was revisiting its earlier ruling in favor of the bar association after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated and remanded that ruling for reconsideration in light of the justices' 5-4 decision last year in Janus v. AFSCME. In Janus, the majority overruled a decades-old decision upholding the constitutionality of dues paid by nonmembers of public sector unions required to represent them. The high court also held the unions could not deduct agency fees from nonmembers' wages unless the nonmembers affirmatively consented.