Freedom Foundation, a Washington Nonprofit Corporation v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 117, et al.

In Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, 585 U.S. 878 (2018), this Court held that public-sector employees have a First Amendment right to decline to pay dues to public-sector unions. Unions and recalcitrant states have been trying to circumvent that decision even since. This case provides a striking example. Under Washington law, if an employee authorized the state to deduct union dues from her wages in the past, the state must continue deductions unless and until the union informs it that the employee has revoked her authorization. And unions go to great lengths to prevent employees from effectuating such revocations. Here, petitioner mailed revocation forms to unions on behalf of employees, but the unions refused to open mail bearing petitioner’s logo or an associated return address—and continued to ask the state to deduct dues from the nonconsenting employees. Petitioner sued the unions under 42 U.S.C. §1983 to vindicate both the employees’ Janus rights and its own rights to associate with those employees and communicate on their behalf. But the Ninth Circuit held that petitioner has no remedy for those constitutional violations because the unions purportedly did not act “under color of state law” when invoking the state’s aid to seize objecting employees’ wages. That decision renders Janus nugatory, conflicts with this Court’s state-action precedent, and entrenches a circuit split. The question presented is: Whether public-sector unions that invoke the aid of state officials to deduct union dues from a nonconsenting public-sector employee act “under color of law” for purposes of 42 U.S.C. §1983.