An associate professor at the University of Maine at Machias is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court a lower court ruling on his lawsuit that calls for an end to a state law that compels public-sector employees to accept union representation, particularly when the person is not a member of the union. Jonathan Reisman of Cooper is being represented by the Buckeye Institute, which filed the labor-law challenge on January 2. The institute, based in Columbus, Ohio, is a think tank whose mission is to advance free‑market public policy in the states. It is also representing a professor in Minnesota and a teacher in Ohio in challenging union representation.
     "Professor Reisman is a hardworking public employee who has for many years been forced to associate with a union with which he disagrees and suffer it to speak for him," says Robert Alt, president of the Buckeye Institute and a lead attorney on the case. Noting an earlier Supreme Court ruling -- Janus -- that state laws cannot compel public employees to financially support union advocacy, he asks how states can require public employees to accept representation from unions that they have chosen not to join. "These are serious questions about the constitutionality of exclusive representation -- questions which the U.S. Supreme Court needs to address."
     "Despite resigning his union membership, Professor Reisman is required by Maine law to be represented by a union with which he does not agree and of which he is not a member," says Andrew Grossman, a partner at BakerHostetler in Washington, D.C., and counsel of record on the Reisman v. Associated Faculties of the University of Maine (AFUM) petition. "Following the court's landmark Janus ruling, it is clear that these laws are unconstitutional, and we hope the court will recognize them as such."
     Reisman's lawsuit against the university and its faculty union had initially been dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Jon Levy in December 2018. He then appealed that dismissal to the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which upheld the district court's decision on October 4.
In his lawsuit, Reisman contended that the University of Maine System Labor Relations Act violated his rights of free speech and association by allowing the AFUM to bargain collectively on behalf of all employees who comprise the bargaining unit. He argued that the act imposes on him "a government‑appointed lobbyist who attempts to influence government on his behalf and in his name, as his agent and representative, even though he disagrees with the positions it attributes to him." Among the positions that the union has taken that Reisman disagrees with are its decision to expend funds opposing the election of Maine Governor Paul LePage in 2010 and 2014; its support of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016; its opposition to school choice and charter school initiatives; and its support for a referendum that raised the state's minimum wage.
     The faculty union and the university and its board all argued that Reisman's constitutional arguments are contrary to established precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Reisman, though, pointed to the Supreme Court's Janus decision that held that statutes compelling the payment of fees to a union that serves as an exclusive bargaining agent for all employees -- both union members and non‑members -- violates the First Amendment rights of non‑members by compelling them to subsidize the union's private speech.
     In his ruling, though, U.S. District Court Judge Levy found that the Janus decision does not, as Reisman argues, call into question previous precedent that the First Amendment is not violated when a democratically selected union serves as the exclusive bargaining agent for all employees. The judge noted that the union was not, as Reisman asserts, appointed by the university board but rather was selected by a majority vote of the employees. He added, "Reisman remains free to speak out in opposition to the union and its positions as he sees fit."
     In its decision, the First Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the state law does not designate the union as Reisman's personal representative. Rather, the law "merely makes clear that a union, once it becomes the exclusive bargaining agent for a bargaining unit, must represent the unit as an entity, and not only certain of the employees within it, and then solely for the purposes of collective bargaining."