Milwaukee City Wire

A Milwaukee-based conservative think tank has filed a lawsuit against the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) District over a policy that allows the public school district to pay a teacher’s union representative full-time wages and benefits to do only union-related work.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) states that the school district currently uses taxpayer money to pay the union representative, alleging that this disturbs the requirement that public money must only be spent on public work.

WILL’s deputy counsel, Luke Vebber, said his organization does not “have an objection to the union being able to speak or advocate on behalf of its members at all, the objection here is to who pays for it. Our goal would be for all this time to be reimbursed.”  

“Public agencies need to be good stewards of our tax dollars, and there are certain lines that cannot be crossed — and in this case we believe the MPS policy crosses that line,” he said.

Vebber also said the difference is that “this suit involves a public employer using public resources to allow public employees to engage in ‘union-related activities,'” which can include political activism, “so this is unique from other union reps who may represent a private employer.”

The United States Supreme Court recently decided a similar case in Janus v. AFSCME that “compelling a person to subsidize the speech of other private speakers’ raises similar First Amendment concerns.”

The Wisconsin Constitution recognizes that the freedom of speech “includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all” and the school district's union leave policy amounts to taxpayers subsidizing the speech and activities of labor unions, which is a form of unconstitutional compelled speech, according to WILL.  

The MPS union leave policy states, “Each designated collective bargaining unit may request that its representatives be released with pay to engage in union-related activities for a maximum of 10 days per fiscal year. Any union may request additional leave for its representatives, including full release up to one school year."