In the wake of a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirming that government employees can no longer be forced to support labor unions with their paychecks, union leaders are resorting to forging employee signatures on authorization cards in order to access their bank accounts (with the help of the government, of course).

To cite just the latest in a long line of such cases, last week the Freedom Foundation contributed a “friend of the court” brief in a case pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit that involves a public employee union forging the signature of a worker in order to confiscate money to which it was neither contractually nor constitutionally entitled.

In Todd v. AFSCME, Council 5, the Freedom Foundation argues that AFSCME’s suggestion that its blatant forgery was just a “one-off” mistake, or administrative error, is simply not true.

If it were, the 9th Circuit wouldn’t just last week have heard three forgery cases in the same day, all concerning public employee unions and all litigated by Freedom Foundation attorneys.

Instead, AFSCME’s forgery of Todd’s signature is evidence of a larger pattern and practice of unions forging employee signatures across the country.

Rather than a mistake, forging members’ signatures as an excuse to take their money without their consent and over their objections represents a systemic attempt to subvert the unambiguous intent of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME.

It’s one thing to claim that a member who signs an agreement has consented to have their money taken by a union. It’s something altogether different to claim that forging an employee’s signature without their knowledge should have the same effect.