Raymond LaJeunesse, Jr., was Vice President and Legal Director of the National Right to
Work Legal Defense Foundation from 2001 to April 29, 2023.  He became the first Foundation
Staff Attorney in 1971 and has more than fifty years of experience helping workers in litigation in federal and state courts and administrative agencies concerning the abuses of compulsory unionism.

While a Staff Attorney Ray argued four cases in the United States Supreme Court. Those cases include Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Ass’n, 500 U.S. 507 (1991), which limited the purposes for which compulsory union fees collected from public employees could lawfully be spent; Air Line Pilots Ass’n v. Miller, 523 U.S. 866 (1998), which established that unions cannot compel nonmembers to exhaust union-established remedies before going to court to challenge compulsory union fees; and Marquez v. Screen Actors Guild, 525 U.S. 33 (1998), in which the Court recognized that unions must notify private-sector employees that they can satisfy the “membership” requirement of “union shop” agreements by paying fees for union bargaining activities and need not join and pay full dues to keep their jobs. He also was lead attorney in Hohe v. Casey, 956 F.2d 399  (3d Cir. 1992), in which more than $8.3 million in compulsory agency fees was recovered from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees for a class of 57,000 nonmembers.

Ray has authored several published articles about labor law issues, has testified before Congressional committees several times, and was an Advisor on the Transition Team for Labor-Related Agencies, Office of the President-Elect, in 1980-81, and a legislative aide to a member of the Virginia state legislature. He has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Labor and Employment Law Practice Group of the Federalist Society’s Lawyer’s Division since 2000. Ray has spoken or debated numerous times before various groups around the country on such topics as Right to Work laws, compulsory unionism arrangements, the misuse of union dues for politics, union organizing tactics (“card check” vs. secret-ballot elections), and the future of the union movement.

Ray holds a BA in Humanities, cum laude, from Providence College and an LLB from Washington & Lee University School of Law. Before joining the Foundation, he worked as a research director for a political committee and a self-employed consultant for political committees and candidates, specializing in election law and opposition research. He also served in the U.S. Army.

Bar Admissions: Virginia, 1967; U.S. Supreme Court, 1982 (admitted only in VA).