Federal court strikes down discrimination against workers at the Puerto Rico Police Bureau who exercised First Amendment rights

Vanessa Carbonell (center) and other employees of the Puerto Rico Police Bureau won big at the Puerto Rico District Court in September 2024. Their Foundation-won decision forces their employer and the union to stop violating their Janus rights.

SAN JUAN, PR – The National Right to Work Foundation’s 2018 victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME opened new horizons for employee freedom across the country. For the first time, the Justices recognized that the First Amendment prohibits union bosses from forcing public sector employees to join a union or pay dues as a condition of employment, and that union bosses can only take dues from a worker’s paycheck with their affirmative consent.

Foundation attorneys’ efforts to enforce the landmark decision yielded a big victory this September for a wide swath of civilian employees at the Puerto Rico Police Bureau (PRPB). In a class action federal lawsuit, more than a dozen PRPB employees charged officials of the Union of Organized Civilian Employees with violating their Janus rights by stripping them of an employer-provided health benefit because they refused to join the union.

A recent decision from the District Court of Puerto Rico found in favor of the employees’ arguments, stating that their employer had indeed taken away the health benefit because the employees exercised their right to not join or pay dues to the union.

Scheme Forced Workers to Join Union or Lose Access to Better Healthcare

“This is either retaliation for exercise of non-union members’ post-Janus non-associational rights under the First Amendment under the Constitution or simply discrimination,” said the Court.

According to lead plaintiff Vanessa Carbonell and her colleagues’ original lawsuit, they all exercised their Janus right to opt out of the union at various points after the 2018 Janus decision. They each began noticing that as dues ceased coming out of their paychecks, they also stopped receiving a $25-a-month employer-paid benefit intended to help employees pay for better health insurance.

The lawsuit demonstrated that PRPB officials cut the benefit off to employees who refused union membership — a clear case of discrimination against employees who exercise their First Amendment right to abstain from union affiliation.

Union and Employer Must Stop Discrimination

The District Court’s decision, in addition to declaring that the ploy by PRPB and the Union of Organized Civilian Employees is unconstitutional, orders an injunction to stop PRPB officials from continuing to withhold the benefit from Carbonell and other employees.

“Janus enshrined a very simple First Amendment principle: That union officials need to convince public employees to support their organization and activities voluntarily,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens.