Court: no union dues refund for public workers

The Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling that barred public employee unions from collecting fees from nonmembers did not give union members a right to resign and recover dues they have already paid, a federal appeals court said Wednesday.

Neither the union nor the state of Washington, the workers’ employer, violated their First Amendment rights by continuing to collect dues they had voluntarily agreed to pay, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The ruling applies to several similar cases in California, including one from this January in which a federal judge in Oakland denied refunds to schoolteachers who had left their union.

“The First Amendment does not support employees’ right to renege on their promise to join and support the union,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown said in the Ninth Circuit’s 30 ruling, the first by any federal appellate court on the issue.

The case is one of a series of efforts by foes of government employee unions to enlarge on the victory they scored in June 2018. In the case of Janus vs. AFSCME, the Supreme Court ruled 54 that states violated the freespeech rights of workers who chose not to join the unions by requiring them to pay fees to unions for the costs of representing them at the bargaining table. The ruling applied to about two dozen states, including California, that required public employee unions to represent all employees.

Groups of nonunion members are seeking refunds for the fees they paid before the Supreme Court ruling, but the Ninth Circuit and other courts have ruled against them, saying the unions had reasonably relied on 40 years of high court precedents allowing the deductions. The nonmembers have appealed to the Supreme Court.

Wednesday’s case involved seven Washington state employees who dropped out of their branch of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees after the Supreme Court decision and sought refunds. They and other AFSCME members had promised in April 2018, under a new union membership agreement, to pay dues for the next year. But the seven plaintiffs argued, in a proposed classaction suit, that they signed the agreement without being properly advised of their constitutional rights.

Upholding a federal judge’s dismissal of the suit, the appeals court said the former members had not been coerced into remaining in the union or signing the agreement. The court said they could have dropped out in 2018 and paid the lesser fees then charged to nonmembers, but chose to remain and keep such benefits as discounts on some goods and services, access to scholarship programs and the right to vote on union contracts.

The Supreme Court’s ruling “does not extend a First Amendment right to avoid paying union dues,” McKeown said. She said the state has merely allowed “the private choice of the parties” and did not coerce them to remain in the union. And she found no evidence that the union, a private organization not bound by the First Amendment, had conspired with the state to force members to remain and pay dues.

AFSCME’s general counsel, Judith Rivlin, said federal courts around the nation “continue to reject these attempts by corporate interests to manipulate the judiciary against working people and trample on their rights and freedom to join together in a union.”

Attorney James Abernathy of the Freedom Foundation, representing the seven employees, said they would appeal the ruling, either to the entire appeals court or to the Supreme Court.

The appeals court has ruled, in effect, that “the First Amendment does not apply to employees who choose to pay union dues,” Abernathy said.