(Washington, D.C.) — This week, U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) and U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced legislation to overhaul the federal charter of the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the country, to make it more accountable and less partisan.
The legislation, titled the Stopping Teachers Unions from Damaging Education Needs Today (STUDENT) Act, was first introduced by Rep. Fitzgerald in 2023 and is based on Freedom Foundation recommendations for curbing the NEA’s worst practices and returning the organization to its founding mission.
Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe released the following statement:
“In an era of plummeting student test scores and ballooning public school spending, the country desperately needs a fierce advocate for excellence in public education. When Congress recognized the NEA with a federal charter in 1906, it did so with the mandate that the NEA ‘promote the cause of education in the United States.’ It’s nothing short of tragic that so much of what’s wrong with public education today can be traced to the NEA’s obdurate progressivism and brazen partisanship.
At the NEA’s recent Representative Assembly in Portland, the union attacked our democratically elected president as a ‘fascist,’ opposed the enforcement of our immigration laws, and doubled down on its disturbing track record of antisemitism by severing ties with the Anti-Defamation League. Attendees at the conference were told that failure to share their pronouns would make them ‘unsafe’ to be around and were encouraged to report any breaches of social justice rules by their colleagues to the union’s Committee on Equity and Ethnic Harmony.
If this is how the NEA behaves when it’s in control, it has no place running public-school classrooms.
Rep. Fitzgerald and Sen. Lummis should be commended for their leadership in introducing the STUDENT Act, which would address some of the NEA’s most concerning conduct and make it more accountable to the public and even its own members. The Freedom Foundation is proud to stand with these courageous lawmakers in the fight to restore sanity to public education.”
Although it was originally incorporated in the District of Columbia in 1886, Congress granted the NEA a federal charter in 1906. Today, it is one of only 95 federally chartered “patriotic and national” organizations such as the Boy Scouts, the U.S. Olympic Committee, and the VFW. The NEA is the only labor union with a federal charter and the only federally chartered organization to engage in extensive political advocacy.
While repealing the NEA’s charter would rightly signal congressional disapproval for the organization as it exists today, the STUDENT Act would amend the NEA’s charter to require practical changes in the union’s operations.
Among other things, the law would:
- prohibit the NEA from engaging in electoral politics and lobbying, a restriction included in 60 percent of federal charters;
- require the NEA to submit an annual report to Congress;
- require the NEA to respect teachers’ First Amendment rights to refrain from union membership;
- end direct and indirect taxpayer support and subsidies for the NEA and its affiliates;
- prohibit the NEA from incorporating the core tenets of Critical Race Theory into its governance, operations, and advocacy;
- subject the NEA and its affiliates to the financial transparency requirements and union democracy protections of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act; and,
- bar the NEA and its affiliates from shutting down schools by going on strike.
So far, the STUDENT Act has been endorsed by the following state and national organizations:
- Alabama Policy Institute
- Americans for Fair Treatment
- Beacon Impact
- Buckeye Institute
- California Policy Center
- Center of the American Experiment
- Commonwealth Foundation
- Competitive Enterprise Institute
- Consumer Action for a Strong Economy
- Defense of Freedom Institute
- Endowment for Middle East Truth
- Foundation for Government Accountability
- Freedom Foundation
- Goldwater Institute
- Heartland Impact
- Heartland Institute
- Idaho Freedom Foundation
- Illinois Policy
- Independent Women’s Voice
- Institute for Reforming Government Action Fund
- Institute for the American Worker
- John Locke Foundation
- Kansas Policy Institute
- Mackinac Center for Public Policy
- National Right to Work Committee
- Nevada Policy
- Palmetto Promise Institute
- Parents Defending Education Action
- Rio Grande Foundation
- Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy
- Upper Midwest Law Center
- Yankee Institute
- Young America’s Foundation
Additional information about the NEA’s federal charter and the reforms included in the STUDENT Act is available in the Freedom Foundation report, “Rethinking the National Education Association’s Federal Charter.”
Contact:
Maxford Nelsen
mnelsen@freedomfoundation.com
(360) 945-3482
