Six years ago, in Janus v. AFSCME, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from compelling its employees to pay any money to a union in order to maintain their job. Specifically, the Court put an end to the practice in Connecticut and 23 other states where government employees who chose not to join the union were still forced to pay agency fees to the union.
After the Janus decision, government employees have a choice: they may choose to join a union and pay full union dues, or they may decline to join the union and pay no union dues or fees.
Public-sector unions have tried to get around this by creating ways to limit employees’ ability to leave and stop paying a union once they join. But almost no unions have disregarded Janus entirely and insisted that it can still take money from a government employee’s paycheck without that employee’s consent.
But that’s what is currently happening to Nicolo Giangrasso, a plumber employed by Hamilton Township School District in Mercer County, New Jersey. When Mr. Giangrasso began his employment in 2012, he joined the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada, Local 9. And the School District has been withholding dues from his paycheck since.
However, recently Mr. Giangrasso decided he no longer wished to be a member of AU Local 9 or to pay dues to the union. So he resigned his membership and requested that the union inform the School District to stop withholding dues from his paycheck.
The union denied his request. But the union didn’t deny his request because it didn’t meet the required conditions. Rather, the union claimed that Janus (and the First Amendment) did not apply at all to Mr. Giangrasso and that he must continue paying money to the union as a condition of his employment with the School District.
The union claimed that the deductions from his paycheck on behalf of the union were not “dues” but “assessments.” But that is irrelevant. Janus is not limited to union dues or agency fees. In that case, the Supreme Court stated that “neither an agency fee nor any other form of payment to a public-sector union may be deducted from an employee, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay.”
It does not matter what the union calls it. The First Amendment prohibits an employee from being compelled as a condition of employment to pay any money to a public employee union. And that’s exactly what is happening to Mr. Giangrasso. The union claims he is required to pay money to it as a condition of his employment as a plumber with the School District.
The union’s actions, along with the School District, to continue taking money from Mr. Giangrasso’s paycheck as a condition of his employment violate his First Amendment rights as set forth by the Supreme Court in Janus.
That’s why Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey on behalf of Mr. Giangrasso to protect his constitutional rights, to stop the withholding of money from his paycheck on behalf of the union, and to reimburse him for illegally withheld money from his paycheck after he requested that the withholding stop.
Government employees have a First Amendment right to decide whether they want their money to support public-sector unions and they don’t lose that right simply because a union relabels that money something other than dues or fees—or in this case, “assessments.”
Jeffrey Schwab serves as Senior Counsel at Liberty Justice Center, the non-profit public-interest law firm representing Mr. Giangrasso in his lawsuit.