Lake County, IN (October 24, 2012) – A state court judge has denied a motion to dismiss a union legal challenge to Indiana’s newly-enacted Right to Work law. The case will now move forward for a decision on the merits of the union’s challenge.

Meanwhile, Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys plan to file another amicus curiae (‘friend of the court’) brief in support of the law for David Brubaker and Douglas Richards, two Indiana workers who are currently forced to accept union monopoly bargaining and pay union dues. Although Indiana’s Right to Work law prohibits new forced dues contracts, forced dues contracts that predate the legislation – such as the ones Brubaker and Richards are subject to – are still in place.

According to United Steel Workers (USW) union lawyers, who filed the legal challenge last summer, Indiana’s new Right to Work law runs afoul of a provision in the state’s constitution that forbids anyone from being forced to work without “just compensation.”

As Brubaker and Richards point out in their legal brief, union officials are never “forced” to provide services to nonunion employees. Union officials always retain the option to only negotiate on behalf of actual union members. Because union operatives are eager to exert control over all workers and then collect dues, they often demand the power to represent everyone in a given workplace, even if many employees have no interest in the union’s so-called “representation.”

“It’s unfortunate that Judge Paras declined to dismiss this desperate challenge to Indiana’s popular Right to Work law,” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Foundation attorneys will continue do everything possible to make workers heard in the run-up to a decision that could undo the state’s Right to Work protections and once again force Hoosier employees to pay union dues just to get or keep a job.”

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.