Three Minnesota teachers demanding refunds from their union have lost a bid to certify their lawsuit as a class action.
A federal judge’s May ruling means individual teachers will have to bring their own legal claims if they want Education Minnesota to return past membership dues and agency fees.
The case, led by Anoka-Hennepin teacher Linda Hoekman, is one of many across the country testing the application of the Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus decision, which said public-sector unions no longer could deduct money from employees’ paychecks without their consent.
That ruling overturned a 1977 decision that allowed unions to deduct “fair-share” agency fees from non-union employees who benefit from collective bargaining.
Hoekman’s case still is alive, but without class certification, the stakes are considerably lower.
Education Minnesota attorney David Aron said he’s not aware of any plaintiffs who have succeeded in winning refunds of union dues or agency fees in the wake of the Janus decision.
“We are optimistic based on hundreds of court decisions that have come our prior to ours that we will continue to be successful,” he said.
Unions, however, have reached settlements in some cases, according to media reports.
JANUS FALLOUT
Before Janus, Education Minnesota had close to 90,000 dues-paying members and received agency fees from another 5,658 non-members, according to public filings.
After Janus, membership fell by 338 and the union lost its non-member fee payers.
Overall revenue from dues and agency fees dropped to $29.9 million in 2019 from $31 million the year before.
It could have been much worse.
Before Janus, a National Education Association survey asked members working in agency-fee states like Minnesota whether they would “still opt to pay” if they knew the union would have to represent them either way. Between 57 and 69 percent said they would quit paying.
Aron said the Red for Ed campaign — in which teachers unions across the country demanded greater public funding, including through walkouts and strikes — created a “surge in energy and activism” that made members see the value in their unions.
“Janus was a real wake-up call for our members. It made them understand that we can’t be complacent and rely on fair-share fees to survive,” he said.
HOEKMAN
The Hoekman case, filed shortly before the Janus ruling, is one of at least 20 like it where plaintiffs are represented by Texas attorney Jonathan F. Mitchell, who disclosed in a court filing that the Chicago firm Juris Capital is financing the lawsuits.
Mitchell and Doug Seaton of the Upper Midwest Law Center, Hoekman’s local attorney, did not respond to an email about the case Wednesday.
The lawsuit describes Hoekman as a former union member who became a fee payer in 2006 because union salaries were too high and she disagreed with some of its political positions.
Also named as plaintiffs are Mary “Dee” Buros, a Shakopee union member since 1997 who says she wasn’t given the option of paying fees instead of union dues, and Paul Hanson, who paid fees at Centennial before the Janus decision and thinks the union should not be involved in politics.
U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson refused to certify the lawsuit as a class action because, among other reasons, the class members don’t all have the same desires or motivations. Even a class of only fee payers, she wrote, would include educators who wouldn’t want the union weakened by a legal ruling would force it to issue refunds.
Nelson’s ruling also applied to a separate 2018 refund case against AFSCME Council 5 by MnDOT worker Thomas Piekarski, who says the union wastes money and misuses union dues. The union offered him a partial refund but he refused.
