Sacramento, California (September 22, 2005) – A group of California teachers and professors today filed a statewide class-action lawsuit in federal court against the state’s largest teacher and faculty unions seeking to bar union officials from forcing more than 350,000 California educators to pay significant dues increases earmarked for political electioneering during this year’s special election.

Filed by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, the civil rights suit seeks to enjoin the use or further collection of a $60-per-teacher mandatory dues increase imposed by California Teacher Association (CTA) union officials and a 10 percent mandatory dues increase imposed by California Faculty Association (CFA) officials that are earmarked for efforts to defeat Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ballot propositions.

Since September 1, CTA union officials have written checks to several campaign committees totaling $23 million from a loan that is secured by guarantees of higher compulsory dues paid by educators as a job condition. Earlier in the summer, CTA officials announced another $22 million in expenditures.

Like many public servants, the six named plaintiffs object to paying for union political activities with which they disagree, so they asked the Foundation for free legal assistance. They seek an order certifying their suit as a class action for all CTA members and nonmembers, and all CFA nonmembers. The educators also ask for an injunction to block the use or further collection of the special dues increase and an order that every teacher and professor be given notice and allowed to obtain a refund, plus interest.

“Union officials are shamelessly fleecing rank-and-file educators to finance a political agenda that many educators oppose,” stated National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “No one in America should be forced to join or pay dues to a union they do not support. This case demonstrates how egregiously union officials abuse the special privileges they have obtained under California law.”

In the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson (1986), the high court ruled that public employees have due process rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to be notified, as potential objectors, of how their forced union dues are spent, and how to prevent the spending of their dues for non-collective bargaining purposes. However, the CTA and CFA unions have failed to give educators any opportunity to object and have rebuffed those who have objected.

To prevent the further violation of their constitutional rights, the teachers ask that the forced dues be placed into escrow, because, as Foundation attorneys note in their complaint, “Once the employees’ money is spent, contrary to their wishes, to affect the outcome of ballot propositions… the employees’ First Amendment rights are irretrievably lost.”

For more information, contact Justin Hakes at (916) 844-4264 or Stefan Gleason at (916) 844-4265.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.