Three Illinois government workers filed a federal lawsuit Monday to end the state’s rule that they must join the public-sector unions that represent their workplaces or pay the unions a fee.
The workers are seeking to join a similar lawsuit filed last month by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. While they support Rauner’s action, the workers argue that they were compelled to attempt to join in the legal action because the governor’s suit does not include any public-sector workers affected by the state’s rule.
“Gov. Rauner’s actions may give Illinois public employees the right-to-work protections they so desperately need and deserve,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, which is representing the three workers with the Illinois Policy Institute. “We applaud these civil servants for stepping up in support of their First Amendment right to not subsidize union officials’ agenda in order to work for their own government.”
In effect, the workers are seeking to both bolster Rauner’s case and to increase the odds that the Supreme Court eventually takes up the issue. In their court filings, technically a “motion to intervene” in another person’s case, the plaintiffs express concern that the governor may opt settle the case at an early stage.
“However legitimate the governor’s interests in this action, the … employees have a different interest and goal: They seek to vindicate and protect their own First Amendment rights, neither more nor less,” the workers’ lawsuit says.
The three state employees are Mark Janus, Marie Quigley and Brian Trygg. Janus and Quigely work for the state’s health agencies and are obligated to support the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31. Trygg works for the state transportation department and is obligated to support Teamsters Local 916.
Carl Draper, an attorney representing Local 916, said the workers’ motion was apparently an attempt to prevent Rauner’s case from being dismissed at an early stage. The governor alone does not have the legal standing to challenge the rule, he argued. “It certainly looks like an attempt to patch the holes in the governor’s case,” Draper said.
Jacob Huebert, senior attorney with the Illinois Policy Institute’s Liberty Justice Center, acknowledged the issue in a press conference Monday. “Regardless of how the court rules on that standing issue, there is no denying that our clients do have standing to challenge these union fees,” he said.
In Illinois, as in many states, public-sector unions typically have clauses in their contracts requiring all employees in a workplace to pay a regular fee to the union regardless of whether they have joined. The fee is supposed to help cover the union’s expenses for collective bargaining on behalf of the employee.
In an executive order last month calling for an end to the practice, Rauner argued that was unfair because it potentially forces state workers to financially support an organization they oppose and gives them little say over the process. That violates the workers’ First Amendment rights, he argued.
“[A] public-sector labor union unilaterally determines the so-called ‘fair share’ fees to be paid by those who choose not to be members of the union,” Rauner’s executive order said. The order would effectively give state employees the same rights as workers in a right-to-work state.
Anticipating that his executive order would be challenged legally, Rauner filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the precedent that allows public-sector unions to charge so-called “fair share fees” to nonmembers, a 1977 case called Abood v. Detroit Board Of Education.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a motion last month to intervene in the case, arguing against Rauner’s position and arguing that he lacks standing. Madigan, a Democrat, was elected independently of the governor. The workers’ lawsuit cites that as part of the reason why they are seeking to join in. “In light of the intervention of the Illinois attorney general against the governor in favor of the unions, the governor presumably also has an interest in resolving an intramural dispute between state officers,” the lawsuit stated.
Labor groups oppose right-to-work rules because they cause unions to hemorrhage members as workers take advantage of the right to opt out. That weakens the unions, which take in less money through membership dues.
In a statement last month after Rauner’s executive order, the Illinois AFL-CIO said it was illegal because the governor had “usurped” the power of the statehouse, which writes the laws. It said his true intent was to drive down the wages for state employees.
Advocates of right-to-work laws have sought to get a case before the Supreme Court. They believe recent decisions, particularly the 2012 case Knox v. Service Employees International Union and last year’s Harris v. Quinn, indicate that there is a potential majority on the court to overturn Abood or even make right to work the national standard.
“[C]ompulsory fees constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a ‘significant impingement on First Amendment rights,'” the court said in Knox. In Harris, the majority said the mandatory fees were “questionable on several grounds.”
