News

Court upholds Utah payroll law

By Wendy Leonard

Deseret News
Published: Wednesday, April 22, 2009 4:56 p.m. MDT

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday reversed itself and ruled to uphold a Utah statute prohibiting union officials from using payroll deductions to divert teachers' and other government workers' money into union electioneering.

"Utah has a legitimate interest in avoiding the reality or appearance of government entanglement with partisan politics," according to the ruling, and Utah's Voluntary Contributions Act "plainly serves the state's interest in separating public employment from political activities."

Five Utah labor unions and one association of labor unions — representing several thousand Utah public employees — brought the suit against Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, seeking a declaration that the Utah VCA, a law passed in 2001, is unconstitutional as applied to all public employers other than the state itself.

After initially siding with union attorneys who argued the law somehow violated the constitutional rights of the union, the 10th Circuit Court put the case on hold pending the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving a similar Idaho statute.

"The recent Supreme Court's decision and now this 10th Circuit ruling makes clear what should have been obvious: Union officials have no constitutional right to use government resources to line their pockets," said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation, which advocates for right-to-work states, including Utah. "It is bad public policy for government bodies essentially to act as bagmen for union political monies."

With the decision in Idaho's Ysursa v. Pocatello Education Association et al., Utah's law, stating that such donations cannot be collected for "political purposes," is upheld.

When the Supreme Court ruling was issued, Kim Campbell, president of the Utah Education Association, said a convenience was taken away from public servants, causing them to have to make individual donations to the causes they would typically support anyway.

The UEA is one of the labor unions affected and since February has not been able to deduct contributions from the paychecks of its members.

In addition to educators and other school employees, public employees in Utah, county and municipal employees and firefighters have the right to refrain from union membership and cannot be lawfully compelled to pay any dues whatsoever to a union, which Gleason said is "exercising their right to work."