Reilly Stephens
Reilly Stephens is a Senior Counsel at Liberty Justice Center, where he assists in cases to protect the rights to free speech, economic liberty, private property, and other Constitutional rights in courts across the country.
Case Background: David Schaszberger worked for the state of Pennsylvania as a statistical analyst with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry for ten years. During his time as a state employee, he was never a member of the government union, yet he was forced to pay AFSCME more than $4,000 in non-member fees just to keep his job.
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Liberty Justice Center’s case Janus v. AFSCME, ruled it was illegal to require public employees to pay union fees as a condition of employment. Following the decision, David and other Pennsylvania state employees who were forced to pay these fees prior to the Court’s decision wanted a refund.
The Liberty Justice Center and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed a federal class-action lawsuit against AFSCME Council 13 on behalf of seven current and former Pennsylvania state employees.
Schaszberger et al., v. AFSCME Council 13 demanded a refund of non-member fees paid to AFSCME between Nov. 7, 2017, and June 27, 2018, the time frame permitted under the Pennsylvania statute of limitations. However, each of these workers and many others have paid much more in illegal union fees over the course of their public service careers.
If successful, the case could have recovered these workers and nearly 10,000 other state employees up to $3 million that the union took from them.
On July 20, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued an opinion, rejecting the plaintiffs’ bid to obtain refunds of pre-Janus “fair-share” fees.
Reilly Stephens is a Senior Counsel at Liberty Justice Center, where he assists in cases to protect the rights to free speech, economic liberty, private property, and other Constitutional rights in courts across the country.