Concord, NH (January 18, 2019)<\/b> \u2013 New Hampshire state workers filed a class action lawsuit in federal court with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys stating that union officials violated their constitutional rights by forcing them to pay unauthorized union fees as a condition of employment.<\/p>\n
State employees Patrick Doughty and Randy Severance are suing the State Employees\u2019 Association of New Hampshire (SEIU Local 1984) in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire.<\/p>\n
The employees are asking the court to order union officials to refund the fees seized from their wages and those of countless other New Hampshire public employees who were subjected to the same unconstitutional mandatory union payments.<\/p>\n
For years, the state forcibly deducted union fees from the two employees\u2019 paychecks at the behest of union officials, even though neither was a member of SEIU Local 1984, nor had they agreed to pay any union fees. The lawsuit seeks refunds of all forced fees seized by the union going back at least three years as New Hampshire\u2019s statute of limitations permits.<\/p>\n
Taking union fees from Doughty and Severance without their explicit authorization violated their First Amendment rights, according to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, a case argued and won by Foundation staff attorneys in 2018. The High Court ruled in Janus that coercing civil servants into financially subsidizing a union violates their rights to free speech and free association.<\/p>\n
The ruling also made it clear that before union officials can collect any dues or fees from them, public employees must affirmatively opt in for such payments and must knowingly waive their First Amendment right not to pay. The Supreme Court\u2019s Janus ruling also observed that public sector unions have been \u201con notice\u201d since at least the 2012 Knox v. SEIU decision \u2013 also argued and won by Foundation staff attorneys \u2013 that forced union fees were likely incompatible with the First Amendment.<\/p>\n
\u00abFor years, New Hampshire union bosses violated the First Amendment rights of the very public employees they claimed to represent,\u00bb said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. \u00abJust as a bank robber caught red-handed would never be allowed to keep the proceeds of such criminal behavior, union officials must also return the money they’ve pilfered from the paychecks of hundreds of thousands of workers across the country in violation of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.\u00bb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Union officials violated civil servants\u2019 First Amendment rights under the Supreme Court\u2019s Janus decision by deducting unauthorized forced fees Concord, NH (January 18, 2019) \u2013 New Hampshire state workers filed a class action lawsuit in federal court with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys stating that union officials violated their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[966,888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-notice","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n