(The Lion)—“What are they hiding?”
That’s the question the Chicago Teachers Union is facing after failing to release audits for more than four years, despite its own legally binding bylaws requiring the union to do so.
The CTU’s bylaws state that the union’s financial secretary “shall furnish an audited report” each year, but it has not done so since 2019.
The failure led several dues-paying union members, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, to sue the CTU last year, demanding financial transparency from leadership.
Despite multiple requests from the lead plaintiff, union member Phillip Weiss, as well as a formal demand letter, the CTU still refuses to release the audits. Now, the CTU is seeking to have the union members’ lawsuit dismissed in court.
In a court filing this week, however, Liberty is refusing to back down, arguing that the union is attempting “to deny fiscal transparency to its 25,000 members by moving to dismiss this case rather than provide the audits to its members.”
The CTU leadership is “doing everything possible to avoid simple, legally required audits required by their constitution,” the Liberty Justice Center noted on X.
“What are they hiding?” a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Dean McGee, asked in an interview with The Lion. If the CTU wants the lawsuit dropped, it only needs to produce the audits, he added.
“We’ve made that offer to them multiple times, and they’ve declined,” McGee said. “To be clear, the offer is: furnish the historical missing full audits to members, let us know a firm date by which you’ll be able to publish the 2024 audit, and commit to furnishing them moving forward to members every year, and the lawsuit goes away.”
In recent months, the CTU posted short, three-page “audit reports” on their membership portal that give “summaries of financial statements,” McGee said. “Their claim, essentially, was that that satisfies their obligations. And the problem with that is that those little summary financial statements are not audit reports by any commonly understood definition of the term.” The union also recently deleted the historical, full audits that used to be available to members.
The CTU did not respond to a request from The Lion for comment, but in a legal filing, it made three arguments for the court to dismiss the lawsuit. Notably, the CTU claimed that its brief financial summaries should be enough to warrant dismissing the lawsuit as moot.
“CTU’s Constitution requires that an ‘audited report’ be furnished to members; for decades this meant full, independent financial audits prepared by certified public accountants,” Liberty Justice Center responded in its court filing this week. “Defendants have instead offered self-prepared, summary reports that lack the necessary detail and independence to qualify as legitimate, independent audit reports.”
As the court battle wages on, McGee told the Lion he hopes the lawsuit will “send a message” nationally.
“We’ve heard a lot of concerns expressed around the country about teachers’ unions becoming part of national political movements, rather than focusing on what matters for their members and putting members first,” McGee told the Lion. “And so I’m certainly hopeful that this lawsuit will help send a message around the country that unions should focus on their members and not national politics.”