Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) signed a bill on Sept. 9 that tells you everything about how entrenched interests behave when they start losing an argument. They don’t get better at making their case. They get a lawyer, a subpoena, and a fine schedule.
The new law makes it illegal to “falsely impersonate” a union or a union representative in New York. On its face, that sounds reasonable. Fraud is bad and nobody wants a con artist posing as a shop steward to steal a worker’s Social Security number. But read past the press release and you find the real target: the state attorney general now has subpoena power and can seek $1,000 per violation against any person or group, in state or out, whose mailers about a worker’s right to leave a union get labeled “impersonation.” Unions get their own private right to sue on top of that. I’ve spent three decades in regulated finance, and I know what an uncapped $1,000-per-item liability schedule does to an organization’s willingness to speak. It doesn’t punish fraud. It punishes volume.
