The Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of Martine Uniatowski, a part-time employee for Bay Village City School District in Ohio, against the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE) Local 579 for violating her First Amendment rights under Janus.
During a meeting between HR and Ms. Uniatowski, union representatives who were present supposedly to protect Ms. Uniatorwski’s interests instead strong-armed her into signing a union membership agreement. Although Ms. Uniatowski didn’t have her reading glasses and couldn’t read what she was signing, the union representative pressured her to sign the membership agreement, and she relied on his representation of what it said in doing so. After Ms. Uniatowski saw the amount she was required to pay in dues, she resigned from the union and attempted to stop dues deductions, but was denied at least three times in the year following her signing of the membership agreement.
Although Ms. Uniatowksi is no longer a union member, she has been forced to continue paying money to the union against her will for more than a year. The deduction of dues from her paychecks violates Ms. Uniatowksi’s First Amendment rights as protected by Janus since she has no provided affirmative consent to take dues.
Uniatowski v. OAPSE Local 579 was filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern District of Ohio, on March 11, 2025.
Jeffrey M. Schwab is a Senior Counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, where he litigates cases to protect the rights to free speech, economic liberty, private property and other Constitutional rights in both federal and state courts across the country.
(The Center Square)—The Liberty Justice Center filed three lawsuits on behalf of government employees against their public sector unions. The lawsuits come six years after the Janus v. AFSCME landmark case, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public-sector employees don’t have to pay union dues to have a job....