A Persistent Cook Serves Up a Winning Recipe for the First Amendment

T ina Curtis, the lead cook for the New Haven, Conn., Board of Education, may not have figured herself to be a First Amendment warrior. But by prevailing over her government-union bosses in what may prove to be an important Janus-rights case, she has shown herself to be exactly that.

Curtis’s story is a familiar one. Since the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME asserted that the First Amendment protects government employees from compulsory union membership and obligatory dues-paying, many state and municipal public-sector workers have sought to exercise this free-speech right. But too often, union officials have gaslit and baldly lied to these workers, in a desperate attempt to maintain the forced-dues bounty that, for decades, has crammed Big Labor’s coffers.

In New Haven, the 20-year worker’s union bosses and representatives undeniably understood the message of Janus. And then chose to willfully ignore it.

The Curtis affair is an exemplar of the brazen, dishonest, and Constitution-snubbing tactics being deployed by government-union leadership. Her story begins mere months after the High Court’s decision was rendered. An official from UNITEHERE — officially the Hotel & Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Union Local 217, AFL-CIO — approached Curtis to inform her she needed to sign a new membership document that would authorize the City and Board to deduct union dues from her wages. This was based on the collective-bargaining agreement between the union and the New Haven Board of Education, which made a dubious contention — no dues, no membership, no job:

All employees, if not already members, shall within thirty (30) days following the effective date of this Agreement, as a condition of continued employment, become and remain a member of the Union in good standing or pay to the Union an agency fee in recognition of the services performed by the Union.

The document explicitly ignored that Janus had ended compulsory union membership as a requirement for employment:

This authorization shall remain in effect and shall be irrevocable unless I revoke it by sending written notice to both the Employer and the Union by registered mail during a period of ten (10) days immediately after the anniversary of the date of this authorization, or after the date of termination of the applicable agreement between my Employer and the Union, whichever occurs sooner, and shall be automatically renewed as an irrevocable check off from year to year, unless revoked as hereinabove provided irrespective of whether I am or remain a member of the Union.

Misled by the document into believing that a membership requirement was indeed mandatory for continued employment, Curtis signed UNITEHERE’s “representation authorization” form in early March 2019.

Case not closed. Curtis soon learned of Janus, which intrigued her. So she contacted UNITEHERE official Hannah Schmitt to ask if she could resign. Curtis says she told Schmitt that, had she known of her Janus rights, she would not have signed the membership form, and would have opted to leave the union in order to stop having her salary dunned for dues. Schmitt responded — according to Curtis’s claim in an ensuing legal action — by warning that she “‘couldn’t opt out’ and that ‘[President] Biden’ had ‘signed’ a bill to ‘overturn’ Janus, which would mean that Ms. Curtis would owe ‘back dues’ if she resigned.”

Not accepting Schmitt’s spin, Curtis continued to press her case. Unfortunately, she made no headway. She charged — per her looming legal filing — that “other officials of UNITEHERE” told her “they ‘did not know’ whether resigning would affect her employment benefits, which further delayed Ms. Curtis’s resignation, while she looked into that issue.” More looking meant a firming resolve: Curtis wrote the union to demand the acceptance of resignation, which was rejected — the union’s explanation being “at this current time your union dues deductions can’t be stopped at this current time [sic].” Dues continued to be appropriated from Curtis’s paycheck, even though UNITEHERE was fully aware of the implications of the Janus decision (in a press release dated the day of the Supreme Court’s ruling, UNITEHERE condemned it as “designed to take power from workers and give it to the bosses”).

What recourse does a New Haven Board of Education food-service employee have when her First Amendment rights are repeatedly denied by powerful entities, including her bosses?

Giving in was a recourse — but it is not the one a determined Tina Curtis chose. Instead, she contacted The Fairness Center, a Pennsylvania-based legal nonprofit and public-interest law firm dedicated to providing “free legal services to those hurt by public-sector union officials.”

On February 28, 2022, Curtiss and her legal team went on the attack, filing a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. In Curtis v. Hotel & Restaurant Employees & Bartenders Union, Local 217, AFL-CIO et al (the “et al” being the City of New Haven and its Board of Education), the plaintiff charged the practice of “requiring payment of money to Union as a condition of public employment violates Ms. Curtis’s rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States,” and claimed it was done in malicious defiance of Janus:

UNITEHERE was motivated by evil motive or intent, or acted with reckless or callous indifference to Ms. Curtis’s constitutional rights, when it . . . purposely defied the Supreme Court’s Janus decision to prevent Ms. Curtis from exercising her constitutional rights to disassociate from Union and not to provide it financial support.

Curtis demanded her resignation be accepted, her collective dues since March 2019 be refunded, with interest, plus punitive damages, and — of wider importance, and to the potential benefit of all the union’s members — that UNITEHERE remove from all documents the prevailing, unconstitutional language stipulating that employment was contingent upon union membership and dues-paying.

As Danielle R. Acker Susanj, Curtis’s chief Fairness Center lawyer, explained to Connecticut Inside Investigator:

In Tina’s case, union officials knew that the Supreme Court had ruled in Janus that forced fees for nonmember public employees are unconstitutional but still told her in writing that she had to pay the union to keep her job. . . . Tina isn’t challenging a resignation ‘window’ — she’s challenging the membership document that told her this unconstitutional statement.

The big courtroom battle . . . wasn’t. Like a cheap suit, UNITEHERE folded. Quickly. On May 17, the defendants signed a formal settlement agreement caving to Curtis’s terms, including her demand that the union end its dishonest practice of stipulating that union membership was a requirement for employment:

Defendants will not present to employees in the bargaining unit covered by the collective bargaining agreement . . . the “Union Security” provision or state that dues or fees to Local 217 are required as a condition of employment so long the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Janus remains controlling law.

It is no small victory. As The Fairness Center’s Susanj put it:

Union officials tried to bully Tina into giving up her Janus rights, but she fought back and won recognition that Janus applies not just to her but to her entire bargaining unit. Some union officials in states across the Northeast are acting like the Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t apply to them, but our clients in those states are battling to ensure Janus rights are attainable for all employees who deserve them.

There will be more fights. Frank Ricci, the Yankee Institute’s Fellow of Labor and Special Initiatives, says the abuse of Janus-affirmed First Amendment rights is alive and well in Connecticut. Last year, the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature enacted what many call the “Captive Audience Act” — approved with great fanfare by liberal Democrat governor Ned Lamont — that gives union officials a monopoly on discussing contract terms with public-sector workers. “Every contract,” says Ricci, “should make it clear what the employees’ rights are. Unfortunately, most unions have traded transparency for treachery, where they deliberately obscure an individual’s rights in hope to trap them into membership and utilize their dues to enhance the unions political power.”

So it goes. But so too, Tina Curtis, unexpected champion of the First Amendment, may inspire other Janus-curious government workers to persist. And prevail.