Whether a group of 23 California state lifeguards were deceived and coerced to join a union and denied the right to resign is a decision pending at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Justices Richard Anthony Paez, Jacqueline Nguyen, and John Tunheim heard oral arguments last week where counsel for the California State Law Enforcement Association (CSLEA) argued that lifeguards are required to remain union members because they signed a membership card.
“Our argument is that it violates Janus because they should be able to leave at any time and to stop subsidizing speech that they disagree with,” said Mariah Gondeiro, an attorney with Advocates for Faith and Freedom, which represented the lifeguards.
Janus v. AFSCME is a 2018 United States Supreme Court case that decided that public employees are no longer required to pay money to a union as a condition of employment. The ruling also held that public employees must affirmatively “opt in” to the union before the union can collect money from their paychecks.
“We're saying that those membership cards have to amount to a constitutional waiver,” Gondeiro told the Southern California Record. “They must have a certain amount of language on the cards in order to be enforceable. They have to inform lifeguards of their rights. They have to, at a minimum, let the lifeguards know that if they sign this membership card that they're having to lock in for four years. Those cards say nothing. The lifeguards didn't even see the collective bargaining agreement.”
Underlying the appeal is a class action complaint filed in May 2020 in the Southern District of California alleging that CSLEA violated their First Amendment right to resign union membership and not pay money to a union.
“It was hard to tell during our argument what the judges were thinking,” Gondeiro added. “I don't necessarily think that it was a favorable panel. They were all Democrat appointed judges. So, not the panel we were looking for but I think that it could in the end work out because I am very confident that if the Ninth Circuit rules against us and the case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, I do believe the Supreme Court will reverse the Ninth Circuit.”
If the lifeguards win, they will be refunded their money for the time they worked as lifeguards, according to Gondeiro.
"What we've seen since Janus is a lot of district courts rendering the decision superfluous and not really following the Supreme Court decision," she said. "I think this case will establish how far the unions can go in order to get people locked into paying dues and supporting unions financially."