(OLYMPIA, Wash.) — The newest Janus-related appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrates even more clearly than the dozens of others preceding it just how little respect public-sector unions have for what was supposed to be a landmark labor-reform ruling — and the court that issued it.
On July 10, the Freedom Foundation filed a request for certiorari with the court, asking it to consider a lawsuit in which the organization alleges three different Teamsters locals in the state of Washington (117, 160 and 163) abridged the First Amendment rights of state employees. In all three instances, the Teamsters refused to open lawfully mailed packages from the Freedom Foundation believed to contain paperwork from public employees seeking to terminate their union membership and dues.
Such actions are in stark defiance of Janus v. AFSCME (2018), in which the court recognized that union participation cannot be made mandatory for workers in the public sector. But almost before the ink on the ruling had dried, unions — in many cases with the complicity of state and local government — began engaging in a wide variety of schemes to making the opting-out process as difficult as possible.
“We’ve seen unions agree to process opt-out requests only during a two-week annual window,” noted Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe. “We’ve seen unions go to court trying to prevent us from informing their members about their constitutional rights – paid for with their own dues money. And when all else fails, we’ve seen them forge signatures on membership and dues-authorization forms.”
“In this case, they weren’t even that sophisticated,” he continued. “They simply asserted a right to refuse to open mail from the Freedom Foundation because they knew these packages were likely to contain dozens of opt-out requests.”
“Wise to fact that mail from the Freedom Foundation likely contains notices revoking employees’ prior approval to have the state deduct union dues from their wages, three Washington unions have simply refused to open that mail altogether,” the court filing notes. “In fact, these unions rejected not only packages bearing the Freedom Foundation’s logo, but also any unmarked packages with return addresses associated with Freedom Foundation. And when the Freedom Foundation attempted to resend the revocation forms (at additional cost) via other unmarked packages from other addresses, the unions began rejecting them too as soon as they uncovered that tactical shift.”
When the Freedom Foundation, a national watchdog organization specializing in the abuses of government employee unions, filed suit in April 2022, a District Court judge ruled there was no constitutional violation and the Foundation had no standing to bring the case.
The ruling was upheld in December 2024 by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The Freedom Foundation has filed literally dozens of Janus-related lawsuits since 2018 because the ruling isn’t being enforced,” Withe said. “And many of those have been appealed to the Supreme Court, which has steadfastly refused to consider a single one.”
“The principles that undergirded Janus are no less important today, and this is the ideal opportunity to reinforce them,” he concluded. “It’s high time the justices took a Janus case, if only to send a long-overdue message to unions that the court says what it means and means what it says.”
