Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office fired back at a recently filed lawsuit by the Tennessee Education Association (TEA), saying the suit “lacks merit” to succeed.
The TEA filed that lawsuit last month to challenge a provision of the “Teacher Paycheck Protection Act” passed by the Tennessee General Assembly related to union dues. The act raises the minimum teacher salary to $42,000, but the TEA is objecting to a section that also prevents unions like it from deducting dues from teacher paychecks.
The legislation lacks a severability clause that guarantees teacher raises remain if another section of the act is challenged, meaning it could be up to the Chancery Court to decide whether the TEA’s challenge impacts teachers raises.
The court is scheduled to hear the case Thursday afternoon.
The Attorney General’s office filed a memorandum in opposition to the TEA’s lawsuit last week challenging the union’s claims that the paycheck deduction provision of the act is unconstitutional.
Skrmetti says Tennessee has the right to prohibit payroll deductions because that process incurs expenses on taxpayers. He also argues allowing payroll deductions may convince teachers that the state wants them to join a union.
“Just as its employees have a First Amendment right not to be compelled to speak, the State itself has a right to control its own message,” wrote Skrmetti in the court filing. “The General Assembly may reasonably have concluded that by participating in payroll deduction for membership dues, the State was applying coercive pressure to its employees to join the PEAs (professional employees’ association).”
An estimated 46,000 teachers used the automatic deduction process to pay their TEA dues this year. The union uses that money to fund its political operations.
TEA attorneys argue prohibiting payroll deduction violates both the state and U.S. constitutions in a number of ways, including impairing contractual obligations in memorandums of understanding (MOU) between unions and local school districts.
“These substantial contractual impairments do not further any legitimate, much less important or vital, state interest; and even if they did, the impairments are not reasonable and necessary to further such interest,” wrote TEA attorneys in the suit. “Payroll deduction of membership dues in professional educators’ organizations has been both expressly permitted by law and a widespread practice by school districts in Tennessee for nearly 50 years.”
Skrmetti argues the new state law doesn’t impair MOUs because school districts already reserve the right to change the terms of these agreements for “policy reasons.”
The Attorney General’s office also makes the case that unions won’t be harmed by the payroll deduction prohibition, since there are many other ways for them to collect dues.
The Metro Nashville Education Association has used social media to encourage its members to do just that by converting their dues payment to EZ pay.
“There is no reasonable expectation on behalf of the PEAs (professional employees’ association) that they would receive the payments through payroll deductions. The membership forms allow for multiple methods of payment, and even when payroll deductions are authorized, they may be revoked in writing at any time,” wrote Skrmetti in the court filing. “Given the ability of TEA members to unilaterally change the method of paying dues, the PEAs have no “reasonable expectation” of continued payment through payroll deduction.
