Susan Bennett is employed by the Moline-Cole Valley School District in Illinois. She didn’t want to be a member of the union, but at the time public school teachers unions were allowed to deduct “agency fees” from non-members’ wages. Agency fees were supposedly a method of preserving dissenting teachers’ rights to not support the unions’ political activities while still compelling payment for unions’ “core” collective bargaining activities. So Ms. Bennett, even as a non-member, still had to pay.
Then, in a case called Janus decided in 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that agency fees were an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. Shortly after that ruling, Ms. Bennett tried to get her money back—money that was unconstitutionally taken from her. The union advised her, however, that she could not revoke her union dues authorization until a specific “window period.” Her next opportunity to submit a written request to revoke these deductions would be from July 27, 2019, to August 11, 2019. In the meantime, the union would continue to deduct the fees.
The Janus decision said that employees had to freely give consent to waive their First Amendment rights and allow unions to collect fees. Here the Ms. Bennett signed her union membership agreement prior to that decision, and therefore could not have knowingly waived a right not yet recognized by the Supreme Court. She has thus petitioned the Supreme Court, arguing that the union continued to violate her rights despite the clear rules of the Janus decision.
Cato has joined the Goldwater Institute on a brief supporting Ms. Bennett’s petition. We argue that, for workers to validly waive their right not to support a union, someone must inform them of that right. But, since Janus, unions have taken steps to ensure their members don’t know their First Amendment rights. In fact, the practice is so widespread that courts should not even treat a union membership agreement as establishing a valid waiver of a worker’s First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court should take Ms. Bennett’s case to ensure that unions do not continue to undercut the Janus decision.
