Brief counters union lawyers’ claims that invalid injunction let them extend forced dues contracts after law went into effect

Charleston, WV (June 7, 2018) – National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys filed an amicus curiae brief with the Kanawha County Circuit Court. The brief urges the court to deny a motion made by union officials that would circumvent and undermine the protections afforded to workers by West Virginia’s Right to Work law.

The brief, filed in West Virginia AFL-CIO et al. v. Governor James C. Justice, et al. responds to union lawyers’ legally dubious arguments that union officials should be allowed to enforce forced dues contracts entered into during the pendency of an erroneous injunction against enforcing the state’s Right to Work law.

After West Virginia’s Right to Work law passed in February 2016, several state unions brought a lawsuit against the state. The Kanawha County Circuit Court issued a preliminary injunction against the law to prevent it from being enforced. However, the West Virginia Supreme Court later ruled that the Circuit Court was wrong to have granted the injunction in the first place.

The Right to Work law renders invalid all forced unionism clauses in union bargaining agreements entered into after July 1, 2016. After the injunction was dissolved, union lawyers asked the Circuit Court to exercise authority and give legal effect to such clauses in agreements entered into during the erroneous injunction’s pendency.

In the brief, Foundation staff attorneys argue that the Circuit Court cannot rewrite the date of the law’s application, allowing for workers to be forced to fund a union or be fired for years after the state’s legislature intended the law to go into effect.

Additionally, because the injunction was erroneous and is now dissolved, the Right to Work law is fully effective. Foundation attorneys argue that a wrongly-issued preliminary injunction does not give union officials any exemption to the law. The brief also explains that the Circuit Court’s validation of the clauses would decide the validity of an untold number of contracts in other jurisdictions throughout West Virginia concerning parties not even represented in the case, and therefore such an order would not be in the Circuit Court’s power.

“This lawsuit challenging West Virginia’s Right to Work law was always about creating confusion and uncertainty that union bosses could then exploit to seize more dues from workers against their will,” said National Right to Work President Mark Mix. “West Virginia’s popular new Right to Work law is a victory for workplace freedom, and it is long past time that Mountain State union bosses stop wasting dues money fighting dead-end legal challenges and start to work to provide services for which rank-and-file workers will voluntarily pay.”

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.