Even though city of Los Angeles employee Camille Bourque never signed a membership authorization form with the Engineers and Architects Association (EAA) in the 22 years she has worked for the city, she says the union still deducts earned wages for agency fees to fund political speech with which she disagrees.
Rather than respond to her repeated objections to paying membership or dues, the EAA allegedly first ignored and then told her she missed the window of time in which she could terminate withdrawal. Bourque, in turn, has sued the City of Los Angeles and EAA in the Central District of California federal court.
“Camille never signed a membership agreement so how can they possibly try to hold her to this window period if she never signed their agreement,” said Bourque’s attorney Timothy Snowball, litigation attorney for the Freedom Foundation. “The union is still taking her money to this day without her consent and in clear violation of the Janus case.”
In Janus vs. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2018 that agency fees are unconstitutional.
“It indicates that unions are willing to do anything they can not to comply with the Janus case,” Snowball told the Southern California Record. “You have unions and their Democratic allies trying to make an effort specifically to circumvent the Supreme Court's decision.”
Co-plaintiff Peter Morejon, an airport superintendent of operations, last signed a membership authorization with EAA in 2005 but when he received an EAA newsletter last year calling on members to vote for certain political candidates, he said it was time to stop paying membership dues.
Like Bourque, however, EAA initially ignored his request and continued to deduct earned wages for another four months.
“He called them five or six times,” Snowball said. “An administrative assistant finally told him that his termination letter was just sitting on the director's desk.”
The lawsuit, filed on May 13, seeks declaratory judgment, injunctive relief, damages for violation of civil rights and a refund of the money Bourque and Morejon paid the union.
“What they wind up doing with that money is giving it to Democratic politicians who then pass laws that help keep the money flowing,” Snowball said. “It's quite the racket and if this were to occur in any other context, we would call it a shakedown but because unions are cloaked within this supposedly public interest of being labor organizations, they have that defense and I think it's a false defense.”
The lawsuit, filed by the Freedom Foundation, alleges the following:
Violation of the right to freedom from compelled speech
“If your money is going toward funding speech activities, your money is considered speech and so by the union taking the plaintiff’s money against their consent and spending it on speech they find to be objectionable, they are compelling speech on their behalf,” Snowball said.
Deprivation of liberty and property interests without procedural due process
“Because the union has not given the plaintiffs a hearing or any opportunity to be heard, it's a violation of procedural due process,” Snowball said.
Inherently arbitrary deprivation of free speech liberty interests
“The substance of legal rules can't be inherently arbitrary or unfair,” he said. “We're alleging a violation of the plaintiff's substantive due process rights because the entire process set up by California Government Code § 1157.12 is inherently arbitrary because the plaintiffs can only take their objections to the union and the union is inherently biased.”