Federal judges: Alabama taxpayer resources cannot be used to collect union dues

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October 15, 2015

GOP vs AEA
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A panel of federal judges in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that union dues cannot be collected using taxpayer funds, and squashed an Alabama Education Association (AEA)—the state’s teachers’ union—effort to subpoena several of Alabama’s top political leaders.

The AEA began fighting a 2010 law barring unions from using taxpayer funds to collect dues through the payroll system almost immediately after it was passed by the newly-christened Republican legislature.

Arguing lawmakers were using the law as retaliation for fighting education reforms, the AEA attempted to subpoena documents related to the bill’s passage. A district court had originally given the AEA authority to pursue those documents, but the panel of circuit court judges said the lower court had “abuse[d] its discretion” in doing so.

Prior to the law’s implementation, public-sector unions such as the AEA were able to use state resources to have members pay dues through auto-withholdings on each paycheck.

When Republicans first passed the law prohibiting the AEA’s payroll deductions in 2010, then-AEA head Paul Hubbert orchestrated a massive mobilization of grassroots workers to flood teachers’ lounges around the state and implore educators to sign up with AEA on a bank draft. The National Education Association, the AEA’s national partner, helped fund and staff the operation. Over the course of a couple of months with hundreds of field staffers, the AEA was able to sign up somewhere around 90 percent of their members to maintain their affiliation with the group.

That suggests that the AEA could potentially survive with only minimal financial damage after the law goes went into effect. But even a 10-25% decrease in dues could cost the AEA’s political arm millions of dollars.

In the 2014 election cycle the AEA spent approximately $8 million more than it took in from teachers’ dues.

So while the AEA has been operating under the law fully for close to two years, Wednesday’s ruling is the final nail in the coffin of its hopes to get rid of the prohibition, and many Montgomery insiders say it will continue to hamper the union’s ability to reclaim it’s previous power.