Ohio EPA, Public Safety Workers Sue Over Allegedly Illegal Union Fee Payroll Deductions

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A proposed class action lawsuit claims employees of the state of Ohio have been forced to continue to pay union dues throughout the term of their collective bargaining agreement despite their requests to opt out.

Filed against the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association AFSCME, Local 11 (OCSEA); Ohio governor Mike DeWine; and the director of the Ohio Department of Administrative Services, the lawsuit states the defendants are parties to a collective bargaining agreement, effective from May 12, 2018 to February 28, 2021, that governs the employment terms of more than 30,000 state workers.

In June 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that the state could not collect union fees as a condition of employment from nonconsenting public-sector employees. After the decision, the defendants allegedly allowed Ohio employees to choose not to subsidize the union through fees deducted from their paychecks. According to the complaint, however, the workers could opt out during only a 30-day period starting 60 days before their collective bargaining agreement expired. According to the lawsuit, this meant that proposed class members could exercise their First Amendment right to not subsidize the union only between December 30, 2020 and January 29, 2021. The lawsuit further notes that OCSEA's payroll deduction forms made no mention of the fact that employees' authorization for deductions could be revoked, nor of their First Amendment right to not subsidize the union.

The named plaintiffs claim they attempted—some of them several times—to revoke their authorization of union fee deductions from their wages yet were refused because they failed to wait until the defendants’ specified opt-out period. The lawsuit argues that the defendants cannot prove that proposed class members waived their First Amendment rights and had no authority to deduct union dues from their wages after the workers revoked their consent. From the complaint:

“On information and belief, the Defendants will continue to jointly enforce their maintenance-of-membership requirement against Plaintiffs and similarly situated unit employees and will continue to deduct and collect union dues from Plaintiffs and similarly situated unit employees without clear and compelling evidence that they waived their First Amendment to right to refrain from subsidizing OSCSEA’s speech.”