Amicus brief at Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals argues NLRB coercion over bargaining means mandatory union dues requirement violates First Amendment

Chicago, IL (July 16, 2026) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed an amicus curiae brief with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in support of University of Chicago graduate students who are challenging the requirement that they pay fees to a union they oppose. Currently, these students must pay the union in order to keep their research and teaching jobs, which are a requirement of completing their graduate program.

The lawsuit, Graduate Students for Academic Freedom, Inc. v. United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, was brought by a group that includes Israeli and Jewish graduate students who oppose being forced to fund the union, especially due to UE union officials’ “virulent anti-Israel advocacy.”

The Foundation’s brief, filed on Wednesday, July 15, supports the graduate students by arguing that the compulsory fee requirement they are subjected to violates the First Amendment, because it is the direct result of extensive and coercive bargaining requirements mandated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB):

“[T]he First Amendment prohibits the government from coercing one private party to infringe on the speech rights of another private party. This is what the NLRB does when it requires employers to bargain over forced fee requirements—the NLRB coerces one private party (an employer) to agree to compel other private parties (employees) to subsidize union speech.

The NLRB would violate the First Amendment by directly compelling employees to pay for union speech. Three times in the last 25 years the Supreme Court has struck down compelled subsidies for third-party speech… There is no constitutionally meaningful distinction between the compelled payments invalidated in those cases and the compulsory union fees at issue.”

The brief notes that in multiple decisions, including Janus v. AFSCME and Harris v. Quinn (both argued by Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys), the Supreme Court held that the government violates the First Amendment by compelling employees to subsidize union speech. More recently, in the 2024 NRA v. Vullo decision, the court reiterated the “principle that a government official cannot do indirectly what she is barred from doing directly.”

The Foundation amicus brief argues that, under those Supreme Court precedents, the NLRB’s highly coercive requirements that force employers in non-Right to Work states to bargain with union officials over forced fee requirements mean that the resulting mandatory dues requirement is unconstitutional government-compelled speech. As the brief points out, employers face NLRB prosecution for refusing to consider such a requirement, and even seeking to defend the conscience rights or academic freedom of those subjected to forced dues does not allow an employer to escape this requirement.

“Union bosses’ forced dues powers are the direct result of government coercion, and it is past time that federal courts take a closer look at how this results in compelled funding of radical speech in violation of the First Amendment,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “These students would have never been forced to fund union boss speech they find abhorrent if it weren’t for the NLRB’s actions, which first controversially subject graduate students to monopoly unionism and then require bargaining with union officials over a forced dues requirement.”

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.