Columbus, OH – On Friday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief in Laird v. United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case and tell government unions that they cannot rely on obscure and arbitrary opt-out windows as a way to deny First Amendment rights to public employees and they cannot illegally take money from public employees’ paychecks once they have quit the union. 

“By claiming that membership cards—which are often intentionally vague on the terms of membership—are legally binding private contracts, government unions continue to illegally deduct dues from employees’ paychecks, forcing them to pay for speech they find abhorrent,” said Jay R. Carson, senior litigator at The Buckeye Institute. “In this case, that speech is a call to defund the police.”

In the wake of Janus, government unions used vague and obscure opt-out windows to keep public employees locked into union membership. In its brief, The Buckeye Institute argues that signing a membership card—which either makes no mention of how or when members can quit the union or intentionally obscures arbitrary opt-out windows—does not constitute a legally binding contract and is nothing more than “blanket authorizations for the public employer to deduct whatever dues the union instructs for as long as it instructs.”

The Freedom Foundation represents Glenn Laird in Laird v. UTLA.

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UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert in Laird v. UTLA.