As Chicago's mayor prepares to install a new school board believed to be more amenable to the mayor's plans to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to meet some of the contract demands of his allies in the Chicago Teachers Union, that union has been hit with a new lawsuit from some of its members, demanding the CTU release financial audits they have withheld, allegedly in breach of their own governing rules.
On Oct. 8, attorneys from the Liberty Justice Center, of Chicago, filed suit against the CTU in Cook County Circuit Court. The lawsuit from the nonprofit organization specializing in litigation focused on constitutional rights also names as defendants CTU President Stacy Davis Gates and CTU Financial Secretary Maria Moreno.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of Chicago Public Schools educators and staff, including Philip Weiss, identified as CPS social worker who has worked for CPS since 1998; Bridget Cuevas, identified as a CPS teacher since 2012; Rosemary Swearingen, a primary diverse learning teacher at CPS since 2001; and Kenneth Meracle, a CPS social studies teacher since 2017.
“CTU members deserve to know where their money is going. After four years of silence, it’s time for transparency,” said Weiss in a statement released by the Liberty Justice Center at the time the lawsuit was filed. “This lawsuit isn’t just about us - it’s about the more than 25,000 educators across Chicago who rely on the union to uphold its commitments.”
The lawsuit takes aim at the alleged refusal of the CTU to release annual financial audits to its members for the past four years.
The lawsuit notes under the CTU's contract and bylaws the union is obligated to "furnish an audited report of the Union which shall be printed in the Union's publication" and made available to all union members.
However, since 2020, the CTU under Gates and Moreno has failed to do so. The most recent report listed financials for an audit that covered the union's revenue and spending for 2018 and the first half of 2019.
According to the complaint, the four plaintiffs have repeatedly requested copies of the audit, but the union has ignored their requests. According to the complaint, Weiss made "multiple written requests" to CTU leadership "to publish copies of the audits which have been unanswered or ignored."
Most recently, the lawsuit said, the plaintiffs and their attorneys from the Liberty Justice Center sent a letter to CTU leadership, again demanding the release of the audits to CTU members, and notifying Gates and other CTU leaders that they intended to sue if CTU leaders continued to shirk their "contractual duties."
According to the Liberty Justice Center's release accompanying the lawsuit, CTU leadership allegedly opted instead to threaten and harass the four plaintiffs.
"A week after receiving the letter, CTU’s lawyers requested the identity of the plaintiffs, purportedly to confirm their union membership," the Liberty Justice Center said in the release.
"Instead, the union used this information to launch into intimidation tactics to suppress dissent and distract from the core issue: its failure to provide financial transparency to members.
"On October 8, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates attempted to publicly shame the plaintiffs on a member-wide call by singling them out by name and invoking 'Project 2025' to falsely frame their request for transparency as part of a 'right-wing' effort."
Project 2025 is a policy document drafted by conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. The document is styled as a "presidential transition project," designed to help guide a potential second term in office for former President Donald Trump.
The document was not drafted or advanced by Trump or his campaign. However, Project 2025 has been used by Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, her campaign and other Democratic operatives to attack Trump and other conservative elected officials and political candidates.
In a post on her personal account on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Gates did not directly respond to the lawsuit. Instead, she shared the Liberty Justice Center's X post announcing the lawsuit, and in a format commonly known as a "quote tweet," again invoked Project 2025 calling it a "direct attack on public sector unions," which she asserted the left-wing economic policy group known as the Economic Policy Institute estimated would cost workers "$77 billion annually in lost wages and benefits."
Gates' post did not explain the supposed link between her union members' lawsuit and the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 "presidential transition plan."
Gates and the CTU have emerged as central powerful figures in Chicago city politics following the election of CTU member Brandon Johnson as Chicago mayor.
In recent months, Gates and the CTU have delivered massive demands for a new contract demand for CPS teachers, amounting to $10-$14 billion in new education spending in Chicago, by some estimates.
The demands include thousands of new hires and 9% annual cost-of-living adjustments for CTU members, plus billions more dollars in other forms of pay and benefit increases.
Non-pay demands are said to include 10,000 new affordable housing units and rent assistance, which have been estimated to be worth up to $4.7 billion and initiatives intended to fight so-called "climate change," including electric school buses and new solar power installations.
As the city prepares to enter into potentially costly and contentious contract talks, Mayor Johnson has sought to remove CPS' current CEO Pedro Martinez, who has balked at the contract demands and at a related demand from Johnson to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars for CPS, presumably to help raise money to meet CTU demands.
After the CPS board refused to fire Martinez as Johnson reportedly demanded, the entire board shocked the city by resigning together.
Johnson has since announced new appointees to the CPS board, even as voters prepare to choose Chicago's first elected school board this fall. The list of appointees includes Debby Pope, a retired CPS teacher who most recently has served as CTU's class size coordinator and grievance correspondent.
Johnson notably attacked reporters at a recent press conference for questioning his selections and for attempting to ask the new appointees if they would support the mayor's demands.
The new lawsuit against the CTU does not reference the recent political machinations by the mayor and his CTU allies.
The lawsuit rather centers solely on the refusal by Gates and the CTU to comply with the requests for the annual audits amounts, which the plaintiffs said amounts to a breach of the contract between CTU leadership and their union members.
The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the CTU to comply with the audit rules and release its annual audits for the years 2019-2023. They are not seeking any money damages, other than attorney fees and the costs of brining the lawsuit.
“We are proud to stand with Chicago educators in their fight for accountability and transparency,” said Dean McGee, Senior Counsel for Educational Freedom at Liberty Justice Center. “CTU leadership must uphold its obligations to the teachers it represents.”
The lawsuit is just the latest brought against the CTU and its leadership for alleged misconduct and illegal actions.
That lawsuit asserts the allegedly illegal actions caused a widespread public nuisance and violated the contract rights of CPS students and families, who should be considered third-party beneficiaries of the collective bargaining agreement between the CTU and CPS.
CTU has asked the court to dismiss the action.
The lawsuit remains pending, with a hearing scheduled for December.