Court of Appeals Dismisses First Amendment Challenge Related to "Right to Work" Ordinance
On April 7, 2020, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in the case O'Brien
v. Village of Lincolnshire upholding the district court's dismissal of a complaint filed
by two unions and their resident members against the Village of
Lincolnshire.
In 2015, the Village Board adopted
an Ordinance Pertaining to Economic Development and Worker Empowerment by
Regulation of Involuntary Payroll Deductions for Private Sector Workers in the
Village of Lincolnshire. The purpose of the ordinance was to exercise
the Village’s home rule power to create a local worker empowerment zone, also
known as a “right to work” zone, to give private
sector workers more individual freedom to choose whether they wanted to
affiliate with a union, rather than being subject to compulsory fair share dues
as required by state law. The ordinance became the target of numerous legal challenges
by the unions which were decided separately from the subject case.
The unions argued that the
Village’s use of taxpayer funds to pay membership dues for the Illinois
Municipal League represented a violation of their First Amendment rights. They supported their argument on the holding in the U.S. Supreme Court's Janus case that the government cannot force a
citizen to subsidize private speech with which the citizen disagrees. However, the Court disagreed with the
fundamental premise of the plaintiff’s claim – that the Illinois Municipal
League’s political advocacy is “private speech.” Instead, the Court held that any speech
expressed by the Illinois Municipal League is “government speech” because (a) the Illinois
Municipal League is comprised solely of municipalities, (b) its political
advocacy is controlled by member municipal officials, and (c) the Village
always retains discretion to disavow the League’s speech or withdraw from
membership.
Many cases have held the First
Amendment does not regulate or limit government speech. As a result, the
unions could not state a claim for a violation of the First Amendment based
on the Village’s “government speech.” As
the Court noted, if taxpayers had the right to challenge every
policy statement by local officials with which they disagreed, it would cause
the operation of local government to come to a halt from all of the
litigation. The proper place to hold
local government officials accountable is the ballot box.
As a result, the Court ruled in favor of the Village and dismissed the unions' case.
Post Authored by Adam Simon, Ancel Glink
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