(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — The lawsuit filed on Dec. 6 by a Stockton (Calif.) Unified School District employee is a bellwether of the policies put in place by public-sector unions nationwide in the wake of a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling recognizing the First Amendment right of government employees to freely opt out of union membership and dues.

“Millions of Americans work for the government at the state, local and national level,” explained Timothy R. Snowball, litigation counsel for the Freedom Foundation, which filed the complaint this week on behalf of Wendy Baker, an interpreter and translator for the school district since 2009. “And their right not to participate in a union and still keep their jobs was affirmed by the Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME. But as far as the unions are concerned, Janus is more an inconvenience than an outright prohibition on unconstitutional conduct.”

In Baker’s case, she signed a membership and dues-authorization form with the California School Employees Association (CSEA) when she was first hired. The document, however, specified that she could leave the union and cease paying dues at any time just by notifying union officials.

In 2022 — four full years after the Janus ruling — Baker exercised her Constitutional right by mailing a certified letter to the union requesting her freedom.

She was informed, however, that while her membership could be terminated immediately, her dues could only be stopped if she filed another request during her union-designated annual opt-out window, which wasn’t scheduled to open again until February 2023.

To justify its actions, the union claimed Baker had signed a subsequent dues-authorization form in 2020 that included the opt-out window provision. But when she asked to see the document, the union refused.

Through her attorneys, Baker was finally able to negotiate a settlement with CSEA in July 2022. Under its terms, her CSEA membership and dues deductions would stop immediately, and she would be reimbursed for the dues that had been deducted from her pay since April.

In return, Baker agreed to release CSEA, its officers and agents from any and all claims, demands, obligations or causes of action through the date of execution of the settlement agreement, including claims for legal fees.

The union also acknowledged for the first time that Baker had not been a member since April 2022 and enclosed a copy of the dues authorization she had allegedly signed two years earlier.

The document had an e-signature rather than a “wet signature,” and Baker denied ever having approved it.

Meanwhile, her August 2022 paychecks were, in fact, dues-free. But by September, the dues deductions had been reinstated.

Baker, however, didn’t notice until almost a year later. At that point, she immediately notified the school district’s personnel department, but when they refused to help her, the Freedom Foundation filed a lawsuit on her behalf with the U.S. District Court in Sacramento.

The dues are still being deducted. Not only is the union abridging Baker’s Constitutional rights, but its violation of the settlement agreement amounts to breach of contract.

“We’re talking about one person paying $47.25 a month in dues,” Snowball said. “Altogether, the amount of dues illegally taken by CSEA since April is about $661.50. By itself, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in dues dollars collected every year by CSEA.”

“What makes it consequential is that the union is apparently willing to go to this length with every one of its 250,000 members,” he said. “CSEA doesn’t mind wasting thousands of its members’ dues dollars to prevent Wendy Baker from winning her freedom if it sends a message to all the others that they can expect the exact same treatment. Even to the point of violating contract law.”

When the Janus ruling effectively banned mandatory union membership and dues, Snowball said, unions were faced with a stark choice — they could either clean up their act and start providing a service workers would pay for voluntarily, or they could resort to deceit and intimidation to pretend nothing had changed.

“Wendy Baker’s experience,” Snowball concluded, “tells you which option they picked.”