Union demands

When Jane Ladley, 62, first started teaching at a public elementary school in the 1970s, she assumed all teachers joined a union. She didn’t think much about it. Then Ladley took a break from teaching in the 1980s and 1990s to raise her four sons. At a certain point during that time she read a Focus on the Family magazine article about a teacher in California who had objected to the way the union used his money for ideological causes. When she went back to teaching in the 1990s, she knew that for religious reasons she didn’t want to pay dues to the state union again.

In about half of the states in the country (states that aren’t “right-to-work”) unions can require dues from all employees at unionized workplaces. But few union members in those states know they can file as religious objectors to paying union dues, a portion of which national unions use for lobbying or funding their pet causes.

State and federal laws protect such religious objectors, but measures also exist to ensure that union members don’t file as religious objectors simply to avoid union dues and benefit from union bargaining without paying anything. So in many cases religious objectors, instead of keeping the union dues money, direct their money to a nonreligious nonprofit. The union must agree to the pick of the nonprofit. And this is where religiously objecting teachers’ cases start to get complicated, ground that courts have not plowed to this point.

When Ladley went back to teaching, she opted out of the state teachers union, Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), which is an arm of the National Education Association (NEA). Ladley, as a Christian and a pro-lifer, was primarily concerned that the NEA had in the past directed funds to Planned Parenthood, an organization that according to its own report performs over 300,000 abortions a year. In its 2011 disclosures the NEA reported giving $8,500 to the group. The NEA stated in its 2014-2015 formal resolutions that it supports “family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom.”

‘Teachers unions should be working for the teachers within their school job.’ —Ladley

She didn’t want any of her money going to a national group where it might be used for such ideological purposes. But she believes in the value of collective bargaining for teachers, and so when she opted out of the PSEA, she joined a local union with no ties to a national union, the Keystone Teachers Association.

“Teachers unions should be working for the teachers within their school job,” she said.

THE PSEA, like public sector unions around the country, has been declining in membership. Part of its 6.5 percent drop in membership since 2011 is explained by teacher layoffs. But more states have become “right-to-work” in recent years, allowing workers to opt out of union membership. Pennsylvania is not one of those states.

In 2012, Ladley’s school district came under a new union contract that required nonmember teachers to pay dues to the state union (a slightly reduced amount known as a “fair share fee”). Ladley and three other teachers she knew decided to file as religious objectors. Under Pennsylvania law their union dues could go to nonreligious nonprofits that they and the union agreed to.

Ladley carefully composed letters explaining her religious objection and proposed directing her money to a scholarship fund for those studying the U.S. Constitution through a Pennsylvania group called the Coalition for Advancing Freedom. The union agreed that as a religious objector she did not have to be a member but then rejected her choice of nonprofit. The PSEA in a letter to Ladley said the group was “political.” The union instead sent her a list of acceptable nonprofits for her gift, like United Way and the American Red Cross.

“How is the Constitution too political?” Ladley said later. “It’s the foundation of our country.”

Her $435.14, the reduced annual union due withdrawn from her paycheck, has been sitting in an escrow account ever since. Last May she sent another letter to the union. She proposed an alternative nonprofit, a Pennsylvania group that does education on the Constitution called the Constitutional Organization of Liberty. The PSEA quit responding to Ladley’s correspondence.

“I was really confused,” Ladley said. “I thought I followed the process here.”

Ladley, now retired after 25 years of public school teaching, began to think the union was going to wait her out, wait until she gave up and donated to the groups the union had suggested. This past fall she filed a lawsuit in a local court, arguing that the PSEA couldn’t on the one hand hold her money in escrow indefinitely, or on the other hand, control what nonprofit her money went to based on ideology. The complaint notes the nonprofits the union suggested all have “political” spending.

THE PSEA DID NOT RETURN a request for comment. In its court filings the union says Ladley’s lawsuit is premature because the union hasn’t decided whether to accept her second nonprofit pick. It also argues that the Supreme Court does not give union members “unfettered discretion” in regard to their nonprofit recipients.

The Supreme Court has ruled that union members do not have to fund the union’s political activities through their union dues, but it hasn’t addressed how unions can control the nonprofit picks of religious objectors. Most teachers don’t test the process.

“Most people either aren’t aware that that’s an option for them,” said Elizabeth Stelle, director of policy analysis at the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative Pennsylvania think tank. “Or they assume they don’t qualify because they think they have to take a vow of poverty or be a nun.”

The process of filing as an objector and redirecting money to a nonprofit correctly “takes a lot of due diligence,” she added. “Even [the union’s] refusal to go with a person’s first choice can force the person to give up on the process. ... In the case of Jane, they’ve never been called out on this before.”

CHRIS MEIER is a public school history teacher in Pennsylvania who filed suit with Ladley. Meier said the union never told him that he could religiously object to the union dues. He did research himself, and told other teachers about it. In his district he knew at least five other teachers who ended up filing as religious objectors.

The union approved the other teachers’ choices for nonprofits. The union did not approve Meier’s choice of nonprofit: Meier wanted to give his money to a legal nonprofit that handles cases against teachers unions, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund.

“The PSEA probably didn’t think it was funny,” said Meier. The union told Meier his choice was rejected because it was a “conflict of interest.” Meier said he thought most of the charities the union listed as acceptable were “great” but said, “It’s the moral stand. They shouldn’t be able to force me to choose one off their list.”