Columbus, OH — The Freedom Foundation today announced it has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE) after the union refused to stop collecting dues from seven Symmes Valley school bus drivers who had properly resigned their membership.

In August 2025, the drivers sent certified letters to OAPSE requesting that dues be stopped from their paychecks.

The union received the letters on Aug. 19, three days before the opt-out window opened. Rather than act on them, OAPSE waited nine days to respond, mailing vague rejection letters on Aug. 28, just three days before the window closed on Aug. 31.

The drivers received those letters too late to do anything about it.

OAPSE’s rejection letters gave no reason — only a vague assertion that the requests failed to meet unspecified requirements. It took two more months of phone calls and emails before an OAPSE representative finally explained: The drivers had put all seven letters in the same envelope, and the union received them two days before the opt-out window officially opened.

The drivers had dated their letters to take effect Aug. 22 — the first day of the window — and mailed them early because the window closed on Sunday of Labor Day weekend, when mail wouldn’t be delivered.

“OAPSE accepted these workers’ resignations from the union — they admitted that much,” said James Abernathy, senior litigation counsel for the Freedom Foundation. “But they kept taking the dues anyway, based on a rule nobody ever wrote down. Ohio law protects workers’ right to leave their union, and we’re confident the State Employee Relations Board will agree these workers exercised that right properly.”

The Freedom Foundation is seeking an order requiring OAPSE to immediately halt dues deductions, repay all dues collected since Sept. 1, 2025, and post a workplace notice acknowledging the violation.