New Illinois pro-union law challenged in federal court

CHICAGO (CN) — A prominent conservative Illinois think tank filed a federal lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Labor on Thursday, hoping to block the state's new Worker Freedom of Speech Act.

Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the act into law last week, though it does not take effect until 2025. It prohibits employers from subjecting their employees to mandatory "captive audience" meetings. Employers use these mandatory meetings to denounce unionization to employees, often when a union drive is underway or when management fears one may be imminent.

Union leaders and sympathizers have heaped scorn on the meetings for decades. When Pritzker signed the new law banning them in Illinois last week, state AFL-CIO President Tim Drea called them "a direct violation of workers’ rights" in a prepared statement.

The conservative Illinois Policy Institute nevertheless argues in its lawsuit that the new law infringes on its own free speech rights. The act's primary intent is barring mandatory anti-union meetings, but its language more broadly prohibits employers from foisting their positions on "religious or political matters" on workers. The Institute says this prohibition bars it from carrying out its central lobbying mission.

"The Institute regularly conducts mandatory staff meetings at which the organization’s views on questions of public policy are expressed," the Institute writes in its complaint. "The act now makes those meetings unlawful."

The nonprofit has been at the forefront of ideological battles against Illinois unions in recent years, particularly the Chicago Teachers Union. It is being represented in its suit by the Liberty Justice Center, a conservative legal group, and seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions against the act.

"The First Amendment protects an employer’s right to speak to employees about matters of importance," Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, said in a prepared statement. “Illinois has enacted a law that prohibits speech based solely on its content, political or religious. The Supreme Court has held that such content-based prohibitions are presumptively invalid."

However, two University of Illinois labor experts — labor law professor Matthew Finkin and Labor Education Program Director Robert Bruno — told Courthouse News they doubted the act applies to a political nonprofit educating its employees on its policy stances. Finkin contrasted the Illinois Policy Institute's situation with workplaces not explicitly involved with politics.

"If your job is to lobby for a particular political position, I don't see the statute as reaching that," Finkin said. "Starbucks is selling coffee. Starbucks doesn't exist to keep unions out."

Finkin and Bruno similarly doubted the Illinois Policy Institute would be able to show standing. The Institute itself argues that the new law places it at risk of civil action from an aggrieved employee, as it plans to "continue holding mandatory meetings and retreats in which changes to public policy and legislation are discussed." But it does not provide examples of any staff claiming to have been subjected to an illegal meeting.

"This suit may not be timely until you have an employee that refuses to attend a meeting and gets fired for it," Finkin said.

Though both experts characterized the complaint as legally weak, they also said challenges to the act were predictable and would likely continue from pro-business sectors. Employers have used so-called captive audience meetings "to great effect" in defeating unionization efforts, Bruno said, and likely don't want to lose that leverage.

"The real intent is to continue to allow the employer to subject their employees to hostile rhetoric about unions, with ... some threat of negative job impact, of discipline, if you refuse," Bruno said. "I would imagine that this wouldn't be the end of challenges to it."

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