It’s reached the point where our adversaries in organized labor no longer have any real expectation of defeating the Freedom Foundation in court and the best they can do is try and salvage scraps of dignity from their losses.
The unions’ latest setback came on April 22, when a Thurston County judge rejected SEIU 925’s arguments and said the Washington State Department of Early Learning must turn over a list of Medicaid-subsidized childcare providers to Spokane resident Shannon Benn.
Benn, who operates a daycare facility with her husband, has published a newsletter for other childcare providers since 2011 and mailed it out to those on a contact list provided by the state. Benn’s newsletter discusses legislation and regulations that affect providers’ childcare businesses and often disagrees with the union on those matters.
All that changed in 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing childcare workers represented by SEIU 925 to opt out of paying any dues or fees at all and the Freedom Foundation announced plans to personally contact every provider to inform them of their newly affirmed legal rights.
The unions filed a series of lawsuits intended to keep the list out of the Freedom Foundation’s hands for as long as possible. And while they were at it, they also sought to keep the list out the hands of the Benns, who the unions believed were simply fronting for the Freedom Foundation.
“The union arguments were always ridiculous,” said Freedom Foundation General Counsel James Abernathy. “But they never expected to win on the merits of the case anyway. Their strategy was, and continues to be, to delay and intimidate anyone who tries to get the list.
“Most people don’t have the resources to fight the unions in court and unions know this,” he said. “But the Freedom Foundation does, and we never back down.”
Not only did the court reject SEIU 925’s reasons why the list shouldn’t be released, but the ruling also vacated a temporary restraining order that had been imposed to keep the information bottled up until the unions’ appeals could be heard.
On April 28, the union announced it was dropping the suit.
“For one thing, they realized they had no case,” Abernathy said. “But more importantly, they also knew that if they took it to an Appeals Court and got an unfavorable ruling there, it would establish a binding precedent to use in other cases, preventing their ability to file frivolous lawsuits solely meant to intimidate requesters and delay disclosure.”
The lower court ruling issued last week is helpful, he said, but it’s not necessarily binding on other courts.
“The point is, we keep winning and they keep losing,” Abernathy said. “They can only keep this up for just so long before judges will see through their scheme. The judge last week saw exactly what they were trying to do and ordered them to stop doing it. Time is running out on their scheme of intimidation and delay.”
