SCOTUS Asked to Hear Homecare Providers’ Case Seeking Return of Seized Union Fees
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2019 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Providers fight to reclaim $32 million in union fees seized in violation of First Amendment
Susie Watts, a plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court Harris decision, is a home care provider for her daughter Libby. The case continues in Riffey, as providers fight for the return of unconstitutionally seized union fees.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Foundation-won Harris v. Quinn case that a scheme imposed by the state of Illinois, in which over 80,000 individual home care providers were unionized by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and forced to pay union fees out of the state funding they receive, violated the providers’ First Amendment rights.
The ruling should have meant that SEIU union bosses were forced to return the unconstitutionally seized union fees. Instead, five years later the providers are once again at the steps of the Supreme Court.
SEIU Union Bosses Keep Illegally Seized Union Fees
After the 2014 ruling, Harris continued as Riffey v. Rauner. The case was remanded to the District Court to settle remaining issues, including whether or not the 80,000 providers would receive refunds of the money SEIU officials seized without consent.
In June 2016, the District Court denied a motion for class certification. The ruling allowed the SEIU to keep the over $32 million in unconstitutional fees confiscated from homecare providers compelled into union ranks, who had not consented to their money being taken for union fees. The Appeals Court upheld the ruling.
In 2018, Foundation staff attorneys successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review and reverse the Appeals Court’s ruling. The High Court did so the day after it issued the landmark Janus v. AFSCME decision, ordering the Appeals Court to reconsider the case in light of the Janus ruling, which struck down public sector forced union fees as violating the First Amendment.
In Janus, which was argued by the same National Right to Work Foundation staff attorney who is lead counsel in the Riffey case, the Supreme Court clarified that any union fees taken without an individual’s informed consent violate the First Amendment. That standard supports the Riffey plaintiffs’ claim that all providers who had money seized without their consent are entitled to refunds.
SCOTUS Asked to Allow Providers to Reclaim Funds Seized in Violation of First Amendment
On December 6, a three-judge panel of the Appeals Court affirmed its previous ruling that no class can be certified from the over 80,000 providers whose money was seized in violation of their First Amendment rights. The panel based its decision on the ground that each individual homecare provider would have to prove that he or she objected to the taking of the fees when the seizures occurred.
After the Appeals Court denied Foundation staff attorneys’ request to rehear the case with all judges, Foundation staff attorneys filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court, asking it to take the case.
Foundation staff attorneys point out that the Janus precedent does not require a worker to prove his or her subjective opposition to forced union fees. Rather, Janus held that the First Amendment is violated if union dues or fees are seized without the worker’s clear affirmative consent.
“The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that SEIU had illegally confiscated union dues from thousands of Illinois homecare providers, but the ruling challenged by this petition denies those same caregivers the opportunity to reclaim the money that never should have been taken from them by SEIU in the first place,” said Ray LaJeunesse, vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Foundation. “If SEIU’s bosses are not required to return the money they seized in violation of homecare providers’ constitutional rights, it will only encourage similar behavior from union officials eager to trample the First Amendment to enrich themselves with the money intended for the care of individuals who need it.”
Foundation Victory: Workers Cannot Be Forced to Fund Union Lobbying
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, May/June 2019 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
NLRB also rules that union bosses must provide independent verification of forced fees audit
Nurse Jeanette Geary challenged Big Labor’s coercive tactics after discovering that union bosses were forcing her to pay for union lobbying activities.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Nine years after filing her case over forced union fees, former Rhode Island nurse Jeanette Geary finally claimed victory over union bosses’ illegal scheme.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a sweeping decision in Geary’s case, providing new protections for workers and accountability over forced fees calculations.
Geary, then a nurse at Kent Hospital in Warwick, Rhode Island, filed an unfair labor practice charge against the United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) union in 2009 with free legal aid from Foundation staff attorneys.
She filed the charges after UNAP officials failed to provide an independent auditor’s verification that its breakdown of expenditures had been audited. She also challenged the union’s forcing her and other employees to pay for union lobbying activities in violation of the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court Beck decision.
“For someone to tell me that they’re going to take my money that I have earned working very hard, and they’re going to use it for their political purposes, you know — that makes me very, very angry,” Geary said.
When Geary discovered what was happening with the union fees she was forced to pay, it was about more than money. “I don’t like to be manipulated because I am a nurse. Just because I nurse and you turn your light on and I’ll be there and I’ll do anything that you need to promote your well-being, that doesn’t mean you can step on me. It was a deep-down, personal, gut reaction to [the union officials] who decided not only would they label me as ignorant and stupid and laugh about me in their office, but they would also take my money.”
The Obama NLRB had issued a bad decision in Geary’s case in 2012, but the ruling was invalidated by the Supreme Court’s 2014 holding in NLRB v. Noel Canning. The Supreme Court agreed with the Foundation’s amicus brief that the Board lacked a valid quorum because of three unconstitutional “recess appointments” then President Obama made.
Five years later, Geary’s case was the only remaining case invalidated by Noel Canning that was still pending without a decision by the NLRB.
In January 2019, Foundation staff attorneys filed a petition at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, seeking a court order that the NLRB promptly decide Geary’s case. The Appeals Court then ordered the NLRB to respond to the mandamus petition by March 4, which caused the NLRB to issue its decision on March 1, just ahead of the deadline.
The NLRB’s 3-1 decision held that union officials violate workers’ rights by forcing non-members to fund union lobbying activities. It also ruled that union officials must provide independent verification that the union expenses they charge to non-members have been audited.
“Jeanette Geary bravely fought against Big Labor’s workplace coercion for years, resisting a blatant refusal to respect her rights and those of the workers union officials claim to represent,” said National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens. “Although this is an overdue victory for Jeanette Geary, ultimately these types of forced union abuses will never be eliminated until Big Labor’s power to force workers to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment is completely eliminated.”
MA Supreme Court Hears Educators’ Challenge to Teacher Union’s Coercive Power
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2019 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Union scheme violates teachers’ rights by blocking non-members’ voice and vote in workplace conditions
Veteran Foundation attorney Bruce N. Cameron argued at the Massachusetts Supreme Court on behalf of four educators challenging coercion from union bosses to join and support a union.
BOSTON, MA – Union officials offered four Massachusetts educators a “choice”: support union partisan politics or lose any voice and vote in their workplace conditions.
Instead of waiving their First Amendment right to refrain from supporting the union, the educators sought free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation to challenge union bosses’ coercion in court.
Earlier this year, veteran Foundation staff attorney Bruce N. Cameron delivered arguments at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, challenging as unconstitutional the state law that grants union officials the power of monopoly bargaining privileges which the union uses to compel support for partisan politics.
Forced Unionism: ‘Not What America Is About’
The four plaintiffs have exercised their right to refrain from union membership. Plaintiff Dr. Ben Branch is a finance professor. His colleague and fellow plaintiff, Dr. Curtiss Conner, is a chemistry professor, both at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Plaintiff Dr. Andre Melcuk is Director of Departmental Information Technology at the Silvio O. Conte National Center for Polymer Research at the University. Melcuk was born in the Soviet Union and opposes the union based on his dislike of collectivist organizations.
Melcuk compared his experience with the union with growing up in the Soviet Union, and noted that the expectation to “pick up the sign and march in step” with the union’s representation and political ideology was eerily similar.
“That’s creepy,” he said. “That is not what America is about.”
Plaintiff Deborah Curran is a long-term teacher in the Hanover Public Schools. The union officials who claim to “represent” her attempted to invalidate her promotion to a position mentoring new teachers and pushed to have her investigated and suspended. She ultimately spent nearly $35,000 of her own money battling union officials just to protect her job.
The educators argue that Massachusetts state law violates their First Amendment rights by granting union officials monopoly bargaining privileges, which are then used to gag non-members from having a voice and a vote in their working conditions.
Educators Ask Court to Declare Union’s Coercive Power Unconstitutional
In the June 2018 Janus victory, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that forcing any public sector employee to pay union dues or fees violates the First Amendment. The educators’ case points out that denying workers a voice in their workplace, unless they are union members, is another form of compulsion to support a union, and should be ruled a violation of the First Amendment.
“I would like everybody’s First Amendment rights to be protected against what I view as this intrusion on their right to free speech,” said Branch. “They’re trying to speak for me and they’re not speaking for me.”
“These are dedicated educators who are being forced to choose between losing their voice in the workplace or paying tribute to union bosses who clearly do not have their best interests in mind,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Although the Foundation-won Janus decision upheld public sector workers’ First Amendment right to choose whether or not to pay union fees, union officials still seek to twist workers’ arms into funding Big Labor’s coffers. A clear ruling is needed to uphold these educators’ right to refrain from union membership without fear of retaliation or coercion.”
