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Suhr v. New York State Department of Public Service

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The New York Department of Public Service's attempts to withhold information from government workers is a blatant campaign to stop them from exercising their First Amendment right not to pay a government union.

In April 2019, Daniel Suhr, an associate senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, submitted a request to the New York Department of Civil Service for basic payroll information for public employees. In his role as an attorney at a public-interest law firm, Suhr sought to provide New York state employees with information regarding their constitutional rights after the Janus v. AFSCME ruling from the Supreme Court.

The State supplied some, but not all, of the information requested in the public information request. To support its decision, the State cited Gov. Cuomo’s Executive Order 183.

The Liberty Justice Center, the public interest law firm that brought Janus v. AFSCME to the U.S. Supreme Court, filed a lawsuit challenging an executive order issued in 2018 by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The governor’s order, issued the day of the Janus ruling, aims to limit access to public information so government employees cannot be notified about their constitutional rights under the Court’s ruling.

Every American should be able to freely exercise their constitutional rights. However, in order to exercise those rights freely, they must know what those rights are. The State’s attempts to withhold information from government workers is a blatant campaign to stop them from exercising their First Amendment right not to pay a government union.