Issue
Workers' Rights
Your Voice, Your Dollars
If you work for a public school district, city hall, a state agency, another government body – or any other kind of local, state, or federal government entity – you have the right to decide whether you want to join a union at your workplace. If you decide union membership isn’t for you, then you are not obligated to pay the union at your workplace any kind of dues or fees, and you have the U.S. Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME to back you up on that.
The Liberty Justice Center represented Mark Janus all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to protect his right to spend his money how he wants. The decision to join or financially support a union is an important and deeply personal one for anyone who takes a government job. Before deciding whether union membership is right for you, it is important to know what’s at stake and what rights you have.
Our Cases Fighting For Workers' Rights
Our Fight in the News
(National Review)—No one should be forced to pay money to an organization that advocates for points of view that they find deeply offensive. For example, a Jewish person shouldn’t be forced to pay for an organization that advocates ideas that he or she considers antisemitic. That’s the situation that Arnold...
(Law360)—A public defenders union violated the First Amendment by forcing two Jewish attorneys who oppose its pro-Palestine rhetoric to continue paying dues, the New York City-based attorneys claimed in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, naming the city and their employer as defendants as well. Arnold Levine and Allen Popper said...
(Reuters)—Two Jewish legal aid lawyers who represent indigent defendants in New York City filed a lawsuit on Thursday claiming that being forced to pay dues to their union after it accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing and genocide” in Gaza violates their constitutional rights. Their lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, against...
(Bloomberg Law)—A pair of Jewish public defenders in New York City sued to stop paying money to their union because it made statements related to the Israeli-Hamas war that they consider antisemitic. The public defenders’ lawsuit filed Thursday argues for a novel extension of the US Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling...
(WND)—A labor union representing school workers has agreed to stop taking dues from an employee who dropped out of the labor organization, but still was being forced to pay the organization. Liberty Justice Center says it’s a victory for workers’ rights. “It shouldn’t have taken a federal lawsuit, but we...
(Center Square)—An Ohio union facing a federal lawsuit agreed to stop withholding union dues from a school district employee’s paycheck, the Liberty Justice Center announced Wednesday afternoon. The center filed a lawsuit February 20 against the Ohio Association of Public School Employees on behalf of Denise Cogar, a Perry Local...