CUNY Professors’ Lawsuit Challenging Forced Association with Antisemitism-Linked Union Continues at Second Circuit
City University professors challenge NY law that forces them to be represented by hostile union hierarchy
New York, NY (June 5, 2023) – Six City University of New York (CUNY) professors have taken their federal civil rights lawsuit against Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union officials to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The professors, Avraham Goldstein, Michael Goldstein, Frimette Kass-Shraibman, Mitchell Langbert, Jeffrey Lax, and Maria Pagano, charge PSC union bosses with violating the First Amendment by forcing them to accept the union’s monopoly control and “representation” – “representation” the professors not only oppose, but find extremely offensive and in contradiction to their personal beliefs.
The professors, five of whom are Jewish, are receiving free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation and The Fairness Center. They seek to overturn New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which grants public sector union bosses the power to speak and contract for workers, including those that want nothing to do with the union. In addition to opposing the union’s extreme ideology, the professors oppose being forced into a “bargaining unit” of instructional staff who share the union’s beliefs or have employment interests diverging from their own.
The professors’ opening brief at the Second Circuit argues that a lower court’s reliance on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Minnesota State Board for Community Colleges v. Knight was misguided. Knight, the brief states, dealt primarily with public employees’ ability to participate in union meetings and not with the professors’ legal argument that being forced to accept the bargaining power and “representation” of union officials is a violation of First Amendment free association rights.
The brief also maintains that the Supreme Court in the 2018 Foundation-won Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision acknowledged that public sector monopoly bargaining is “a significant impingement on associational freedoms.” Other Supreme Court decisions as early as 1944 also recognized problems with monopoly bargaining, the brief notes, including the Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railway Co. decision, in which African-American railway workers challenged a rail union’s racially discriminatory hiring and promotion policies.
“If the First Amendment prohibits anything, it prohibits the government from dictating who speaks for citizens in their relations with the government,” reads the brief. “The State Appellees and CUNY thus necessarily infringe on the Professors’ speech and associational rights by forcing them to accept a hostile political group, which they view as anti-Semitic, as their exclusive agent for speaking and contracting with their government employer.”
Lawsuit: Professors Compelled to Associate with Union Even After Bullying and Threats
The professors’ original complaint recounted that several of the professors chose to dissociate from PSC based on a June 2021 union resolution that they viewed as “anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish, and anti-Israel,” and a host of other discriminatory actions perpetrated by union agents and adherents.
The complaint said Prof. Michael Goldstein “experienced anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist attacks from members of PSC, including what he sees as bullying, harassment, destruction of property, calls for him to be fired, organization of student attacks against him, and threats against him and his family.” Goldstein has needed a guard to accompany him on campus, the complaint noted.
Prof. Lax, the complaint explained, already received in a separate case a letter of determination from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) “that CUNY and PSC leaders discriminated against him, retaliated against him, and subjected him to a hostile work environment on the basis of religion.” Prof. Lax “has felt marginalized and ostracized by PSC because the union has made it clear that Jews who support the Jewish homeland, the State of Israel, are not welcome,” said the complaint.
Suit Seeks Overturn of New York State Law Forcing Union Power on Professors & Damages
The lawsuit seeks to stop the defendants from “certifying or recognizing PSC, or any other union, as Plaintiffs’ exclusive representative without their consent” and “enforcing any provisions…that require Plaintiffs to provide financial support to PSC.” It also demands that the court declare “Section 204 of the Taylor Law…unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to the extent that it requires or authorizes PSC to be Plaintiffs’ exclusive representative…”
“No American worker should be forced to associate with union officials and union members that openly denigrate their identities and deeply-held beliefs,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Yet, New York State’s Taylor Law grants union officials the power to force dissenting workers under the ‘exclusive representation’ of a union hierarchy. As these CUNY professors have experienced, granting union officials the power to nullify public employees’ free association rights in this way breeds serious harm and discord among employees.”
“Not just in Janus v. AFSCME, but in decisions going back decades, the Supreme Court has questioned the constitutionality of union monopoly bargaining,” Mix added. “Federal courts must take action to ensure that government employees can freely exercise their right to dissociate from an unwanted union for religious, cultural, financial, or any other reasons.”
“Our clients want to vindicate their First Amendment rights and win their independence from a union they believe hates them,” commented Fairness Center President and General Counsel Nathan McGrath. “If successful, their lawsuit could transform the relationship between public-sector unions and employees in New York and, potentially, beyond.”
NYC University Professors Take Aim at Forced Union ‘Representation’
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2022 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
CUNY professors’ lawsuit argues NY law forces them under power of anti-Semitic union
Prof. Avraham Goldstein recalled in a Wall Street Journal piece the anti-Semitism his family faced in the Soviet Union. He and other plaintiffs argue they shouldn’t be forced to associate with a union that subjects them to similar hostility.
NEW YORK, NY – For decades, government sector union bosses have relied on two pillars of coercion — forced dues and forced representation — to maintain their grip on power over America’s public servants and the public services citizens rely on.
While the Supreme Court in the 2018 National Right to Work Foundation-won Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court case recognized that forcing government employees to pay dues to stay employed violates the First Amendment, a new Foundation-assisted civil rights lawsuit from six City University of New York (CUNY) system professors may finally defeat union bosses’ privilege to impose union representation over the objections of public workers.
CUNY professors Jeffrey Lax, Michael Goldstein, Avraham Goldstein, Frimette Kass-Shraibman, Mitchell Langbert, and Maria Pagano sued the AFL-CIO-affiliated Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union, CUNY executives, and New York State officials in January, challenging New York State’s “Taylor Law” that gives unions monopoly bargaining privileges in public sector workplaces like CUNY.
The plaintiffs, most of whom are Jewish, oppose the union’s “representation” on the grounds that union officials and adherents have relentlessly denigrated their religious and cultural identity. Several of the plaintiffs exercised their Janus right to cut off dues after PSC officials rammed through a resolution in June 2021 that they found “anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish, and anti-Israel,” according to the lawsuit.
Discrimination Cited in Groundbreaking First Amendment Case
The lawsuit, which was filed with legal aid from both the National Right to Work Foundation and Pennsylvania-based Fairness Center, says: “Despite Plaintiffs’ resignations from membership in PSC, Defendants . . . acting in concert and under color of state law, force all Plaintiffs to continue to utilize PSC as their exclusive bargaining representative.”
The resolution is not nearly the worst example of PSC officials’ anti-Semitism, according to the lawsuit. Prof. Michael Goldstein asserts that adherents of PSC are waging a campaign to get him fired and have targeted him with harassment and threats such that he must have an armed guard accompany him on campus. Prof. Lax cites in the lawsuit a determination he has already received from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that “PSC leaders discriminated against him, retaliated against him, and subjected him to a hostile work environment on the basis of religion.”
While all of the professors take issue with PSC bosses’ radicalism, they also want to break free from internal conflicts within the large and disparate unit, which consists of full-time, part-time, and adjunct teaching employees and others. Prof. Kass-Shraibman states in the lawsuit that “instead of prioritizing the pay of full-time faculty, PSC expended resources advocating on behalf of teachers in Peru, graduate students at various other universities and the so-called ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement.”
On top of all that, Profs. Avraham Goldstein, Kass-Shraibman, and Langbert contend that PSC officials aren’t even respecting their First Amendment Janus rights. Although all three professors clearly indicated they wanted to cut off financial support to the union, the lawsuit explains that “Defendants PSC and the City . . . have taken and continue to take and/or have accepted and continue to accept union dues from [their] wages as a condition of employment . . .” in violation of Janus.
“I had paid thousands of dollars in union dues for workplace representation, not for political statements or attacks on my beliefs and identity,” Prof. Avraham Goldstein wrote in a piece for The Wall Street Journal. “I decided to resign my union membership and naively thought I could leave the union and its politics behind for good.”
“I was wrong,” recounted Prof. Goldstein. “Union officials refused my resignation and continued taking union dues out of my paycheck.”
Suit Seeks Damages and to Overturn NY Law Authorizing Union Control
The lawsuit seeks a declaration from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that the Taylor Law’s imposition of monopoly union control is unconstitutional, and that the defendants cease “certifying or recognizing PSC, or any other union, as Plaintiffs’ exclusive representative without their consent.” The lawsuit also demands the union and university return dues seized in violation of Janus to Profs. Avraham Goldstein, Kass-Shraibman, and Langbert.
“By forcing these professors into a monopoly union collective against their will, the state of New York mandates that they associate with union officials and other union members who take positions that are deeply offensive to these professors’ most fundamental beliefs,” observed National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “New York State’s Taylor Law authorizes such unconscionable compulsion. It is time federal courts fully protect the rights of government employees to exercise their freedom to disassociate from an unwanted union, whether their objections are religious, cultural, financial, or otherwise.”
