Cindy Ellen Ochoa v. Public Consulting Group, Inc., et al.

Washington State designed and operates a statutory system whereby it gives public sector unions authority and power to compel financial support for objectionable speech, and facilitates union efforts to obtain union dues from public employees. This system is unioncontrolled. It offers no means for public employees to contest the union’s representations to the state, or the state’s deduction of dues, before the state diverts the employee’s money to the union for its political speech. Compelled funding of objectionable speech causes an irreparable harm to the employee. Petitioner Cindy Ochoa’s First Amendment rights were violated – twice – under this system by the state diverting Ochoa’s lawfully earned wages even though Ochoa never joined the union or granted consent for dues deductions. Washington State statute requires the government employer to accept, without question, a union claim for employee dues deduction, and prohibits the state from discussing directly with the employee anything related to the dues deduction from her wages. Without any processes or procedures in place to protect Ochoa’s liberty and property interests as a nonmember of the union in avoiding being compelled to subsidize the union’s speech through unauthorized dues, the state and its private payroll system violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The question presented is: Does a challenge to a statutory system alleging failure to provide due process under the Fourteenth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 require an injured public employee to prove the defendants specifically intended to deprive her of her constitutional rights? (i)