Public sector unions clinched a win in an ongoing legal battle with the state.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker recently ruled that banning the automatic deduction of union dues from employees' paychecks violated the U.S. Constitution's contract clause.
In other words, by eliminating the decades-old payment system, it violated the terms of an existing contract, or collective bargaining agreement, between unions and their employer.
"This ruling reaffirms that collective bargaining agreements are contracts that need to be respected. Over and over again, Governor (Ron) DeSantis and anti-worker, anti-public education politicians have tried to dismantle our teachers’ unions," wrote Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the umbrella organization for over 100 educator unions.
The ruling was made in favor of two Tampa Bay area public school unions, Pinellas County Teachers Association and Hernando United School Workers, who were plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Walker issued an injunction to prevent the ban from applying to those unions while the collective bargaining agreements remain in effect.
Many unions have already switched over to the new payment system in order to comply with the state law.
Lee Bryant, president of the Pinellas union, said, because of that, he doesn't think the ruling will change how dues are collected, but it was "important to follow through and get the decision that what was done with SB 256 was, in part, unconstitutional."
Steve Lang, president of the University of South Florida's faculty union, was following the lawsuit and agrees the ruling is a silver lining.
"The union was essentially correct, that you could not implement it without bargaining it, which most of the institutions did not do," said Lang.
The banning of automatic dues deduction is part of a 2023 law, SB256, that placed several new restrictions on public sector unions.
Other provisions included raising the membership requirement from 50% to 60% of eligible employees, and requiring union members to fill out state-mandated membership forms.
The law does not apply to law enforcement, correctional officers and firefighter unions, groups that have traditionally supported DeSantis's administration politically.
Tens of thousands of public employees from municipal workers to school staff lost union representation after the law took effect, an investigation by WLRN found.
Union leaders said the law caused an administrative burden of re-enrolling members in the new dues-paying system, while having to meet the higher membership threshold.
When unions fail to meet the criteria, they have to go through a recertification process, which involves collecting interest cards from at least 30% of employees, then holding an election where a majority of voters must agree to keep their union.
Legal challenges to other parts of SB 256, such as exempting public safety unions and collecting state-mandated membership cards, have failed.
But Lang thinks the recent ruling could spell out hope for other potential legal challenges — particularly against another 2023 bill, SB 266, which restricted tenure and eliminated arbitration in higher education institutions.
The terms for tenure and using arbitration as a neutral third party to resolve personnel disputes are outlined in their union contract, Lang argued. When the law overrode that, faculty morale and trust in administration plummeted.
"Which ones the courts are going to decide have standing and which ones are unconstitutional is yet to be determined," said Lang.
"But what we're seeing is that one at a time, the most egregious ones are falling like dominoes, and what we're wondering is, at what point are these legislative acts going to be just a waste of time."
