The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, September/October 2024 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.

NY law unconstitutionally forces professors under “representation” of anti-Semitic union

Together, (from left) Foundation Legal Director William Messenger, Fairness Center General Counsel Nathan McGrath, and CUNY Professors Mitchell Langbert and Avraham Goldstein seek to establish new protections against forced union association.

WASHINGTON, DC – Avraham Goldstein, a mathematics professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), wrote in a 2022 Wall Street Journal op-ed about the predicament that he and many of his Jewish colleagues face because New York law forces them under the “representation” of an anti-Israel union: “I had paid thousands of dollars in union dues for workplace representation, not for political statements or attacks on my beliefs and identity. I decided to resign my union membership and naively thought I could leave the union and its politics behind for good . . . I was wrong.”

It was this situation that led Avraham Goldstein, along with fellow professors Michael Goldstein, Frimette Kass-Shraibman, Mitchell Langbert, Jeffrey Lax, and Maria Pagano, to file a federal lawsuit against the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union, CUNY, and State of New York officials in 2022. That lawsuit challenged New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which grants union bosses monopoly bargaining power in the public sector. Such power permits union bosses to speak and contract for public workers — including those that want nothing to do with the union.

Professors’ Petition: First Amendment Protects Union Dissenters

Staff attorneys from the National Right to Work Foundation and The Fairness Center have litigated the professors’ case up through the federal court system. Now they’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take their case and clarify that the First Amendment forbids union officials from foisting their voice and values on public sector workers who oppose the union.

“The core issue in this case is straightforward: can the government force Jewish professors to accept the representation of an advocacy group they rightly consider to be anti-Semitic? The answer plainly should be ‘no,’” the petition begins.

The High Court has recognized for decades how public sector monopoly bargaining burdens workers’ First Amendment freedom of association rights. In 1944, the Supreme Court’s decision in Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railway Co. recognized how rail union bosses were manipulating their powers over the workplace to discriminate against African-American railway workers. The Supreme Court restated its concerns most recently in the 2018 Foundation-won Janus v. AFSCME decision, with the majority calling monopoly bargaining “a significant impingement on associational freedoms.”

Original Complaint Detailed Union Bosses’ Discrimination

The professors’ original complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, recounted that several of the professors chose to dissociate from PSC based on a host of discriminatory actions perpetrated by union agents and adherents — including a June 2021 union resolution that the professors viewed as “anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish, and anti-Israel.”

The complaint said Prof. Michael Goldstein “experienced anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist attacks from members of PSC, including what he sees as bullying, harassment, destruction of property, calls for him to be fired, organization of student attacks against him, and threats against him and his family.” Goldstein has needed a guard to accompany him on campus, the complaint noted.

Prof. Lax, the complaint explained, already received in a separate case a letter of determination from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) “that CUNY and PSC leaders discriminated against him, retaliated against him, and subjected him to a hostile work environment on the basis of religion.” As their petition at the Supreme Court notes, these conflicts have significantly increased since the events of October 7.

Professors Could Create Groundbreaking Precedent

The petition asks the Supreme Court to take up the case and stop CUNY and the State of New York from letting PSC union bosses impose their “representation” on the professors.

“New York’s legal scheme forces these CUNY professors to associate with union officials who insult their identity and create a work environment rife with bullying and harassment. It’s hard to think of a more obvious violation of the First Amendment,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “It’s high time that the Justices finally acknowledge the First Amendment protects government employees from being forced to accept political ‘representation’ they adamantly oppose.”