
Rebekah Millard serves as Litigation Counsel in the Foundation’s Oregon Office.
Prior to joining the Freedom Foundation, Rebekah spent eight years as staff counsel for the Life Legal Defense Foundation in California and Oregon. Her practice focused on First Amendment cases, defending religious freedom and freedom of speech rights. She earned her law degree from Oak Brook College of Law and Government Policy in Fresno, California, graduating with honors in 2008.
Born and raised in Springfield, Oregon, Rebekah enjoys investing in her local community through frequenting local businesses (dining out and shopping), volunteering for worthy causes, and taking on do-it-yourself projects for home improvement and interior design. She also enjoys entertaining, cooking, and hanging out with family and friends. Rebekah loves to experience other cultures and enjoys frequent trips overseas as well as traveling within the United States. When not traveling, weekends usually find her hiking the Pacific Northwest’s beautiful trails or downhill skiing.
More and more, small business owners are looking around at the ongoing, unconstitutional lockdown orders and the bills that are piling up and they are saying “ENOUGH!”.
Liam is a curious, intelligent and social 11-year old boy. He also uses a wheelchair, due to disabilities caused by cerebral palsy.
He is non-verbal, but has learned to communicate by eye movement using a communication device. Liam needs help and assistance with the tasks of daily life, but he leads a happy existence with a loving family and his many friends.
Lyssa Williams is a rail operator for the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District (TriMet), public transportation system in Portland, Ore.
In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown’s emergency executive order for dealing with COVID-19 morphed into a statewide mask mandate written by the State Department of Health and enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Authority (OSHA).
June 27 will mark the second anniversary of Janus v. AFSCME, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that should have been complied with from Day 1 — and no organization in the country is working harder than the Freedom Foundation to ensure it is.
Public-sector unions in most of the country have largely been in denial for the past year and a half. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME ruled that mandatory membership and dues for government employees is a violation of their First Amendment rights, they’ve simply carried on as though it never happened.
Government unions have always been fond of claiming their ‘members’ join voluntarily rather than as a condition of public employment. Legally speaking, that’s now true – thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Janus v. AFSCME.
It’s bad enough when public-sector unions by themselves flout the the clearly expressed will of the Supreme Court. But it’s even worse when they get an assist from lower courts.
The Oregon Education Association (OEA) is the subject of a new lawsuit challenging whether teachers seeking to opt out of their union must be accommodated immediately or whether they can be delayed by arbitrary provisions inserted into membership contracts that may be invalid in the first place.
Gloria, an Oregon public employee, first tried to opt out of SEIU 503 in 2012 based on her religious objection to the union’s principles and practices.