On July 27, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees that it is unconstitutional for labor unions to force nonconsenting public employees to pay membership dues. To do so, the justices ruled, is a violation of the First Amendment, since public-sector unions are inherently political. Not only do they engage in robust political activism for higher taxes and and make massive political expenditures to encourage more government spending, but even their central role as a bargaining agent against the elected government is at heart a political activity that all individuals have a choice to support or oppose.
Ever since the ruling, the question has been how many members would quit. But to take this to another level, another question is, how many members will demand refunds, and if so, how far back will they demand them?
On Monday, Teamsters Local 320 settled a lawsuit brought by two Minnesota court employees, Carrie Keller and Elizabeth Zeien, who were incorporated into union ranks without a vote or consent. Theirs is the latest in a string of successful mandatory dues refund lawsuits brought against organized labor since the Janus decision this summer.
Keller and Zeien were hired originally as nonunion members. It wasn’t until later, after Minnesota state officials agreed to go along with a teamster-led push to unionize state workers, that both court employees were press-ganged into union representation without their consent.
“Keller and Zeien were never given a vote on whether they should be part of the union bargaining unit, and they objected to the scheme,” including the imposition of mandatory union dues, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which represented the two employees, explained this week.
The foundation teamed up with Keller and Zeien, and teamster officials agreed eventually to return all the dues, plus interest.
This legal victory against a teamster group suggests there’s real trouble ahead for organized labor. Remember: The Keller and Zeien incident isn’t a one-off.
In July, Service Employees International Union officials settled a lawsuit and returned $2,959.81 in fees to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife employee Debora Nearman. She was the first post-Janus public employee to win a mandatory dues lawsuit.
Not long thereafter, in August, union leaders in Washington settled a forced dues lawsuit brought against them by seven nurses from Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Wa.
This is to say nothing of the lawsuits that are still pending against labor unions over forced member dues. There’s “Scott Wilford et al v. National Education Association of the United States et al,” “Wholean et al v. CSEA SEIU Local 2001 et al,” and “Hough v. Service Employees International Union Local 521.”
If more public-sector workers figure out they can get hundreds or even thousands of dollars refunded from their days as compulsory fee-payers to unions, it could take a serious bite out of organized labor, well beyond just the amount they lose by no longer being able to collect dues from the unwilling.
These successful lawsuits are also in line with what Will Baude predicted at the Volokh Conspiracy on Jul. 19, when he wrote that “unions are likely to be liable for their pre-Janus conduct, for better or worse.”
