The Tennessee Education Association (TEA) has officially dropped its legal challenge of a new state law banning unions from deducting dues from teacher paychecks.
The TEA filed notice to voluntarily dismiss the suit and a panel of Davidson County Chancery Court judges officially ordered the dismissal on Monday.
The move follows an a decision last month by the judicial panel to deny the TEA’s request for a temporary injunction of the new law. Chief Judge Anne C. Martin, Judge A. Blake Neill, and Judge Pamela A. Fleenor found deficiencies with each point of the TEA legal challenge and declared it unlikely to succeed.
The payroll deduction ban is a part of the recently passed “Teacher Paycheck Protection Act” that raised the minimum teacher salary to $42,000. Supporters argued the ban was needed to keep taxpayer dollars from being used to collect union dues and to ensure teachers aren’t coerced into supporting unions like the TEA.
The TEA filed a lawsuit in June challenging the payroll provision calling it unconstitutional. The union did not provide any public statement of their decision to drop the legal challenge.
Monday’s dismissal also removes the possibility of an impact on new teacher raises. The legislation lacks a severability clause that guarantees those raises remain if another section of the act is successfully challenged.
