In The News

A conservative nonprofit group is suing the state of New Mexico on behalf of a government employee who wants out of his labor union.

The case, filed by the Liberty Justice Center, is in some ways a next step after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruled against labor unions earlier this year in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

In that case, the court said it’s unconstitutional to require public employees who are not union members to pay part of the union’s collective bargaining costs through fees deducted from their wages.

In this latest suit, the Chicago-based Liberty Justice Center argues that union members should be able to cancel their membership whenever they wish, contending it is unconstitutional to limit the period when employees can withdraw to particular periods of the year, as is the case in some union contracts.

Connecticut public sector workers who want to resign from their union may find themselves in Hotel California — you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

That’s because AFSCME Council 4 has begun to deny members their right to resign union membership if they have signed in union card within the past two years.

November 27, 2018 – A special education teacher in California alleges his constitutional rights have been violated because his union has refused to allow him to withdraw his membership on three separate occasions.

The Liberty Justice Center filed a complaint on behalf of Thomas Few Nov. 9 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against United Teachers of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Unified School District and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra seeking declaratory relief.

Despite the Janus ruling, some unions are still forcing public workers to pay annual dues.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision from June in Janus v. the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was clear: Public employees no longer are required to pay union dues, even for collective-bargaining purposes. This was no technical or ambiguous point. The court declared it an infringement of the First Amendment when the government forces workers to financially support organizations that they don’t want to support.

Case settled, right? Not entirely. Public-sector unions, especially in California, aren’t used to finding themselves on the losing end of a public-policy battle. As Janus made its way to the high court, some of the state’s unions successfully lobbied the Democratic-controlled Legislature to pass laws designed to undermine the expected decision in that case, which involved an Illinois social-worker who didn’t want to pay dues to his local AFSCME union

When the U.S. Supreme Court restored the constitutional rights of government employees in its recent Janus v. AFSCME decision, we were thrilled. For us, this was no mere academic exercise or legal nuance; the ruling was personal.

Do unions believe in the rule of law? That’s an urgent question as unions and their political friends try to circumvent the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in June blocking the forced collection of union fees.

Despite the landmark Supreme Court ruling this summer barring public-sector unions from requiring nonmembers to pay so-called agency fees, workers in several states say unions are either flat-out ignoring the decision or establishing a frustrating maze of procedural roadblocks to avoid compliance.