Gary Davenport with his wife and three children at the U.S. Supreme Court.

As a result of the National Right to Work Foundation’s precedent-setting victory before the United States Supreme Court in Davenport v. WEA, Washington state’s teachers are receiving compensation for the forced unionism abuses and First Amendment rights violations they suffered at the hands of teacher union officials.

In 2001, Gary Davenport, a history teacher at Kentwood High School, and fellow teachers across the state of Washington who refrained from formal union membership, were being forced to pay $500 or more each per year in fees for the Washington Education Association (WEA) union bosses’ so-called “representation” because their state does not have Right to Work protections for its workers.

It was then that Davenport discovered that WEA union officials were illegally using his and some 10,000 other nonmember teachers’ forced union dues for the union bosses’ political agenda.

After a protracted legal battle in various courts, the U.S. Supreme Court finally weighed in. The Court unanimously ruled in favor of the teachers, declaring unions have no constitutional right to collect fees from nonmembers and allowing states to require union bosses to obtain affirmative consent before spending nonmember public employees’ forced fees on political activities.

After the case went back to state court, WEA union bosses finally settled with the teachers and agreed to refund the dues that were improperly confiscated.

The checks (some of which are pictured below) were sent to thousands of Washington teachers last week.

For more information regarding the National Right To Work Foundation’s history-shaping legal precedents on behalf of abused workers, click here.