A brewing California legislative fight over school discipline highlights the First Amendment violations stemming from mandatory union fees for teachers. At issue is the California Teacher’s Association’s use of member dues and mandatory agency fees from non-members to lobby for school discipline legislation pushed by the Obama administration. Many California teachers oppose the legislation yet are forced to financially support the union’s lobbying for it.
In 2014, California’s teachers unions lobbied for a new state law that eliminated the ability of school districts to expel or suspend students for “disruption and willful defiance.” The new law will sunset in 2018 unless the legislature votes to extend it. And already, the union has said it will lobby to extend the law.
The new law is an outgrowth of the Obama administration’s Office for Civil Rights’ view that higher suspension and expulsion rates for minority students violate federal civil rights laws. The OCR issued guidance recommending local school officials equalize suspension and expulsion rates with alternative forms of discipline such as those now used in California. These include, “Positive Behaviors Intervention Systems, Restorative Justice, Peace Makers, and Peer Mediation.” As their names suggest, these alternative forms of discipline rely on persuasion without the punitive policies or clear consequences often necessary to make such persuasion effective.
Not every teacher agrees with the Obama administration’s effort to make local school discipline a federal civil rights issue. In a recent Harvard poll of teachers, 59 percent opposed these federal policies. Nor do many non-member teachers appreciate the fact that the union is using agency fees — the mandatory portion of union dues — to enshrine this federal view into state law by outlawing certain disciplinary techniques altogether.
While many good teachers are appropriately troubled by the overuse of suspension and expulsion resulting from “zero tolerance” policies adopted in the wake of the Columbine shooting in 1999, they also recognize the need to remove disruptive and defiant students who make classrooms a nightmare for teachers and other students.
Once local school discipline is dictated by federal civil rights officials and enshrined in rigid state laws, teachers’ hands will be tied. As the Los Angeles Times reported after the rules were first implemented, teachers “are overwhelmed by what they consider ineffective responses to students who push, threaten, and curse them.” The Times went on to note that stress over discipline was causing experienced teachers to leaving the classroom altogether.
If there is one thing about which classroom teachers are entitled to have their own opinion, it is classroom discipline. Indeed, at the beginning of this year, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s largest teachers union, supported zero tolerance policies. While Weingarten is free to make up her own mind, teachers forced to pay compulsory fees are not — they must go along with the federal effort to micromanage school discipline policies, like it or not.
Regardless where one comes down on these and other questions of how best to educate our children, everyone can agree that the state should not be allowed to force individual classroom teachers to fund one side of the argument or the other. These laws mean that many teachers are forced to pay dues that finance efforts to pass laws they oppose.
The Supreme Court’s tied decision in the Friedrichs v. CTA case challenging these laws means the First Amendment rights of thousands of teachers will continue to be aggressively violated by organizations that rely on a stream of coerced financial support.
Terry Pell is the president of the Center for Individual Rights, the public interest law firm that representing the California teacher plaintiffs in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelineson submissions.
