Center of the American Experiment files amicus brief with U.S. Supreme Court challenging forced exclusive representation by unions
Center of the American Experiment filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Uradnik v. Inter Faculty Organization, which calls for an immediate end to laws that force public-sector employees to accept a union’s exclusive representation. The plaintiff in the case is a professor from St. Cloud University. It is the first post-Janus labor challenge filed with the Court. It was filed by the Center’s colleagues in Ohio, the Buckeye Institute, led by Robert Alt.
Professor Kathy Uradnik has bravely taken a stand to demand her First Amendment rights by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to end unfair laws that force her to speak through a union she is not a member of. Her union—the Inter Faculty Organization (IFO) at St. Cloud State University—created a system that discriminates against non-union faculty members. Minnesota law forces Professor Uradnik (and all public employees) to accept this second-class treatment. As Kathy says, “That’s wrong.”
The Janus v. AFSCME decision on June 27, 2018 raised serious questions about the constitutionality of exclusive representation—questions which the U.S. Supreme Court needs to resolve. Professor Uradnik’s case gives the Court the opportunity to address what Justice Samuel Alito called, ‘a significant impingement on associational freedoms that would not be tolerated in other contexts.”
Seventeen groups signed on to American Experiment’s amicus brief including: the Alaska Policy Forum, Americans for Lawful Unionism, Americans for Tax Reform, the Beacon Center of Tennessee, the Center for Worker Freedom, the Freedom Foundation, the Illinois Policy Institute, the Liberty Justice Center—which successfully argued Janus v. AFSCME, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Maine Heritage Policy Center, Montana Policy Institute, Nevada Policy Research Institute, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Rio Grande Foundation, Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights, and the Wyoming Liberty Group.
You can read Professor Uradnik’s commentary in the St. Cloud Times here.