Greetings, I am thrilled to report another victory for freedom against a public sector union.
Last July, Freedom Foundation made a public records request to the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) seeking the names of all individual providers in the State of Washington. An individual provider is paid by Medicaid funds to provide care for the disabled in their home. There are over 30,000 individual providers in Washington. Freedom Foundation seeks these records simply to inform individual providers of their newly enunciated right under Harris v. Quinn (decided in June) to not pay union dues against their will—a right the union (SEIU 775) refuses to inform them of.
The union sued DSHS and Freedom Foundation to prevent disclosure of the records because the union wants to keep individual providers in the dark about their constitutional rights. Instead, the union wants to maintain its ability to intercept Medicaid funds intended to help the disabled and their care providers in order to put it in their own coffers. (This scheme is especially shameless—even for governement unions.)
The union lost big time. The judge ruled against every single one of the union’s arguments, stating that the requested records were disclosable under the Public Records Act. The union is appealing the decision, but the Freedom Foundation hopes to be able to inform individual providers of their constitutional rights very soon.