CHICAGO — A federal appeals panel won’t let a labor union sue the village of Lincolnshire over allegations it violated members’ constitutional rights by using tax money to fund a municipal organization with positions that sometimes run counter to union political priorities.
A three-justice panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion on the matter April 7, affirming an earlier ruling of U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey. Judge Ilana Rovner wrote the panel’s opinion; Judges Michael Scudder and Amy St. Eve concurred.
In January 2019, Blakey denied a motion from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 and the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters to change his mind from his December 2018 ruling, in which he found Lincolnshire could pay membership dues to the Illinois Municipal League (IML). That opinion rejected the unions’ argument that those payments should be considered impermissible donations to a private advocacy group, rather than “government speech.”
Lincolnshire Village Hall
The plaintiffs based their arguments on the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Janus v. The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, in which the high court found mandatory union fees violate the speech rights of non-union workers forced to pay them, because the unions receiving the money may engage in political speech and activities the non-union workers may oppose.
“A government may say what it wishes and select the viewpoints that it wants to express,” Rovner wrote. The panel said that right is limited by the guidelines of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, as well as the check of the political process through which citizens can elect representatives. But Lincolnshire’s decision to join the IML, the panel continued, is wholly acceptable.
The IML is a voluntary group “composed entirely of local governments,” Rovner wrote. “The decision to join — to associate with — the League is controlled entirely by the village, and membership both allows village control over the League’s messages and signals a willingness to speak through the League.”
Although the panel didn’t dispute the conflict between the unions’ political positions and those the IML espoused — notably support for former Gov. Bruce Rauner’s “Turnaround” agenda, a platform with several planks perceived as more favorable to ownership and management than organized labor — the content of the IML’s message didn’t render it private as opposed to governmental.
“Lincolnshire was unique in Illinois in its whole-hearted adoption of the League’s promotion of the governor’s Turnaround Agenda,” Rovner wrote. “It was the only unit of local government to adopt an ordinance legalizing local ‘right to work zones,’ as promoted in the Turnaround Agenda. Although the (unions) vehemently disagree with the Turnaround Agenda, they cannot plausibly claim that Lincolnshire — by itself or through an association of local governments —lacked the right to speak and to take a position on that agenda.”
The panel further rejected the unions’ argument the IML went beyond its intended nature as a nonpolitical association to engage in partisan lobbying. Rovner wrote the IML couldn’t fulfill its statutory purpose without lobbying its members or the General Assembly regarding improvements to local government. The panel said the unions didn’t adequately allege any private party had control of the IML’s speech and said the flaws in their First Amendment arguments likewise undercut their equal protection claims.
The unions also failed to convince the panel Blakey erred by dismissing their complaints with prejudice, as well as by denying a motion to reconsider so they could file a fourth amended complaint. The panel reviewed the case’s procedural history and noted Blakey dismissed the state law claims without prejudice, declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction. Rovner wrote that none of the defects in the third amended complaint’s federal claims were addressed in the fourth, rendering that version functionally futile.
The union plaintiffs are represented by Countryside-based Local 150 staff attorneys Dale D. Pierson, Kenneth Edwards, James Connolly Jr. and Robert Paszta; attorneys Marc R. Poulos, Kara M. Principe and Joseph Sweeney, of the Indiana Illinois Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting; Kenneth D. Lamb, of Corboy & Demetrio P.C., of Chicago; and Terrance B. McGann and Karen M. Rioux, of the firm of McGann Ketterman & Rioux, of Chicago.
Lincolnshire and the IML are represented in the case by attorneys Lorilea Buerkett and Daniel L. Hamilton, of the firm of Brown Hay & Stephens LLP, of Springfield, and Thomas G. DiCianni and Adam B. Simon, of the firm of Ancel Glink Diamond Bush DiCianni & Krafthefer P.C., of Chicago and Vernon Hills.