Court Opinion

ID: 9838157
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-05 15:00:29.551054+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:34:47.612805
License: Public Domain

22-2743-cv
Wheatley v. New York State United Teachers, et al.

                               In the
                   United States Court of Appeals
                       For the Second Circuit
                                          ___________

                                      August Term 2022
                                       No. 22-2743-cv

                                      ROBIN WHEATLEY,
                                         Appellant,

                                               v.

NEW YORK STATE UNITED TEACHERS, NEW HARTFORD EMPLOYEES UNION, NEW HARTFORD
                          CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT,
                                  Appellees.
                                 ___________

                                   ARGUED: JUNE 26, 2023
                                 DECIDED: SEPTEMBER 5, 2023
                                       ___________

Before: LYNCH, LOHIER, and KAHN, Circuit Judges.
                                 ________________

        A school bus driver ﬁled an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against two public-sector
unions and her employer, the New Hartford Central School District, alleging that their
continued deduction of union fees from her paycheck following her resignation from
both unions violated her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights under Janus v. Am. Fed’n
of State, Cnty., and Mun. Emps., Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018). She now appeals the
dismissal of her claims by the United States District Court for the Northern District of
New York (Scullin, J.). On appeal, Appellant argues that the district court erred by
prematurely dismissing her claims against the unions for, among other things, failing to
adequately plead state action. We disagree and conclude that, because Appellant
voluntarily became a union member and aﬃrmatively agreed to pay union dues through
payroll deductions for a set period, the district court properly dismissed her claims.
       We therefore AFFIRM the district court’s dismissal.
                                ________________

                                 DAVID R. DOREY (Nathan J. McGrath, Stephen B. Edwards,
                                 Logan Hetherington, on the brief), The Fairness Center,
                                 Harrisburg, PA, for Appellant.

                                 SCOTT A. KRONLAND, Altshuler Berzon LLP, San
                                 Francisco, CA (Robert T. Reilly, Andrea Wanner, on the
                                 brief, NYSUT, Latham, NY), for Appellees New Hartford
                                 Employees Union and New York State United Teachers.

                                 NICOLE MARLOW-JONES (Heather M. Cole, on the brief),
                                 Ferrara Fiorenza PC, East Syracuse, NY, for Appellee New
                                 Hartford Central School District.

                                     ________________

MARIA ARAÚJO KAHN, Circuit Judge:

       Appellant Robin Wheatley brings this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against

Appellees the New Hartford Employee’s Union (“NHEU”), the New York State United

Teachers Union (“NYSUT,” collectively with NHEU, the “Unions”), and the New

Hartford Central School District (the “District”). Appellant asserts that Appellees’

deduction of union dues from her paycheck after she resigned from the Unions in March

2021 violated her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights under Janus v. Am. Fed’n of

State, Cnty., and Mun. Emps., Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018).

       The Supreme Court’s decision in Janus invalidated the collection of agency fees

from non-union members but left intact “labor-relations systems exactly as they are.” Id.

at 2478, 2485 n.27. Appellant’s claims against the Unions fail because, even assuming that

there was state action taken by Appellees, the District’s withholding of union dues did

                                              2
not constitute a violation of her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. We, therefore,

aﬃrm the district court’s dismissal of the case.

                                    BACKGROUND

       Appellant became a member of the Unions in 2005 when she began her

employment with the District as a school bus driver. In 2018, Appellant signed a union

membership and dues deduction authorization form (the “Membership Agreement”). In

relevant part, the Membership Agreement contained the following language:

       I understand that this authorization and assignment is not a condition of
       my employment and shall remain in eﬀect, regardless of whether I am or
       remain a member of the union, for a period of one year from the date of
       this authorization and shall automatically renew from year to year unless
       I revoke this authorization by sending a written, signed notice of
       revocation via U.S. mail to the union between the window period of Aug.
       1-31 or another window period speciﬁed in a collective bargaining
       agreement.

J. App’x at 27. The Membership Agreement authorized the District to deduct union

membership dues from Appellant’s wages and remit them to NHEU in accordance with

the New York Public Employees Fair Employment Act, N.Y. Civ. Serv. Law §§ 200, et seq.

(the “Taylor Law”). Under the Taylor Law, such deduction authorizations remain in

eﬀect until they are revoked by the individual employee “in accordance with the terms

of the signed authorization.” N.Y. Civ. Serv. Law § 208(1)(b)(i).

       On March 22, 2021, Appellant resigned from the Unions by sending a signed letter

via email and interoﬃce mail to NHEU’s President, Vincent Nesci, and the District’s

payroll oﬃce. In response, Nesci informed Appellant that although she was no longer a
                                             3
member of the union, dues would continue to be deducted from her paychecks unless

and until she sent a written and signed notice of revocation in the August “window

period,” as described in the Membership Agreement. J. App’x at 11. The District

continued to deduct union dues from Appellant’s paychecks through at least May 28,

2021, but ceased when Appellant sent the required notice of revocation in August. Id. As

a nonmember of the Unions, Appellant did not receive member beneﬁts “while her

deductions were ongoing from the date of her resignation until the day they ceased.” Id.

        Appellant commenced this action on September 10, 2021, asserting two claims for

relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Unions and the District. 1 Count One alleged that

post-resignation deductions to the Unions from Appellant’s wages violated her First

Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association. Count Two alleged that post-

resignation deductions violated Appellant’s Fourteenth Amendment right to due

process. Appellant sought, among other things, injunctive relief, declaratory relief, and

damages equal to the total amount of union dues deducted from her wages after her

resignation in March 2021, plus interest.

        The Unions and the District moved to dismiss Appellant’s claims pursuant to Fed.

R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state

        1 In relevant part, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 states: “[e]very person who, under color of any statute,
ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State . . . subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen
of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights,
privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured
in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress . . . .” (emphases added).
                                                     4
a claim, which the district court granted. See Wheatley v. New York State United Tchrs., 629

F. Supp. 3d 18 (N.D.N.Y. 2022). The court held that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction

over Appellant’s claims for prospective injunctive and declaratory relief because the

District had ceased deducting dues from Appellant’s wages. See id. at 23–25.

       The court also held that Appellant’s § 1983 claims against the Unions and the

District failed to state viable claims for relief. Speciﬁcally, the court concluded that

Appellant’s claims against the Unions failed because the Unions “are not state actors

within the meaning of § 1983.” Id. at 27. With regard to the § 1983 claim against the

District, the court concluded the District was not a state actor because “it was not a policy

of [the] District, but rather state law, that required [the] District to deduct union

membership dues from [Appellant’s] wages until [Appellant] revoked that authorization

‘in accordance with the terms of the signed authorization.’” Id. at 32 (quoting N.Y. Civ.

Serv. Law § 208(1)(b)).     Moreover, in continuing to deduct dues until Appellant’s

revocation during the window period, the court noted that the “District was merely

honoring [Appellant’s] self-imposed, voluntary authorization that [the] District deduct

union dues from her wages unless she revoked said authorization during the annual

window period.” Id. at 33. In addition to the absence of state action, the court also held

that Appellant’s claims failed because Appellant “ha[d] not plausibly alleged that

[Appellees] violated her constitutional rights by abiding by the authorization that she

                                             5
voluntarily provided to them in her Membership Agreement.” Id. at 26. This appeal

followed.

       On appeal, Appellant revives the arguments made before the district court—

namely, that, pursuant to § 1983, the post-resignation deductions from her wages by the

District to the Unions violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Speciﬁcally, she

argues the Unions and the District were state actors under § 1983 when they purportedly

violated her constitutional rights.

                                       DISCUSSION

       Because Appellant challenges the district court’s dismissal of her claims for lack of

subject matter jurisdiction under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1), and for failure to state a claim

under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), we review the district court’s factual ﬁndings for clear error

and its legal conclusions de novo, accepting all factual allegations in it as true and drawing

all reasonable inferences in Appellant’s favor. See Liranzo v. United States, 690 F.3d 78, 84

(2d Cir. 2012) (Rule 12(b)(1)); Melendez v. Sirius XM Radio, Inc., 50 F.4th 294, 298 (2d Cir.

2022) (Rule 12(b)(6)).

       “To state a claim for relief in an action brought under § 1983, [Appellant] must

establish that [she was] deprived of a right secured by the Constitution or laws of the

United States, and that the alleged deprivation was committed under color of state law.”

Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Sullivan, 526 U.S. 40, 49-50 (1999). We need not address the state

action issue in this case because even assuming that there was state action taken by

                                              6
Appellees, Appellant’s arguments that she was deprived of certain constitutional rights

fail. See Hotel Emps. & Rest. Emps. Union, Loc. 100 of New York & Vicinity, AFL CIO v. City

of New York Dep’t of Parks & Recreation, 311 F.3d 534, 544 (2d Cir. 2002) (“Because we also

ﬁnd no constitutional violation, we will assume, without deciding, that the parties’

License Agreement renders Lincoln Center, Inc. a state actor for purposes of event-

scheduling in the Plaza.”); see also Jones v. Cnty. of Suﬀolk, 936 F.3d 108, 114 (2d Cir. 2019)

(“We need not address [defendants] alternative arguments because we conclude that,

even if the state action and seizure questions were to be decided in [plaintiﬀ’s] favor, the

special needs doctrine warrants the district court’s award of summary judgment to

defendants.”).

I.     APPELLANT’S FIRST AMENDMENT CLAIM

       Appellant ﬁrst argues that her First Amendment rights were violated when the

District deducted union dues from her paychecks after her resignation from union

membership. She relies on the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus, stating that public

employees have a right to be free from compelled speech in the form of subsidizing a

union’s political activity through compelled payroll deductions. She contends that

because Janus was decided two months after she signed the Membership Agreement, she

was not able to fully understand the rights she would forgo by executing that agreement.

                                              7
For the reasons set forth below, we join the growing list of our sister circuits 2 and

conclude that Janus does not relieve Appellant of her contractual duties to pay union dues

under the Membership Agreement.

       Janus involved a situation where a non-union member was subject to “fair share”

automatic wage deductions, which were used towards funding the union. Janus, 138 S.

Ct. at 2461–62. Overruling Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), the

Supreme Court found such deductions to be unconstitutional. Janus, 138 S. Ct. at 2486.

Speciﬁcally, the Court was concerned with the dangers of compelled speech and

“[c]ompelling individuals to mouth support for views they ﬁnd objectionable” by forcing

them to subsidize that speech via compulsory union dues. Id. at 2463. The Court thus

condemned the practice of automatically deducting agency fees from nonmembers who

were “not required to consent before the fees are deducted.” Id. at 2460–61. The Court

explicitly limited the reach of Janus by noting “[s]tates can keep their labor-relations

systems exactly as they are—only they cannot force nonmembers to subsidize public-

sector unions.” Id. at 2485 n.27.

       2 See Fischer v. Governor of N.J., 842 F. App’x 741 (3d Cir. 2021) (summary order); Oliver v.
Serv. Emps. Int’l Union Local 668, 830 F. App’x 76 (3d Cir. 2020) (summary order); Littler v. Ohio
Ass’n of Pub. Sch. Emps., No. 20-3795, 2022 WL 898767, at *1 (6th Cir. Mar. 28, 2022); Ramon Baro v.
Lake Cnty. Fed'n of Tchrs. Loc. 504, IFT-AFT/AFL-CIO, 57 F.4th 582 (7th Cir. 2023); Bennett v.
AFSCME Council 31, 991 F.3d 724 (7th Cir. 2021); Burns v. Sch. Serv. Emps. Union Loc. 284, No. 21-
3052, 2023 WL 4834588 (8th Cir. July 28, 2023); Belgau v. Inslee, 975 F.3d 940 (9th Cir. 2020);
Hendrickson v. AFSCME Council 18, 992 F.3d 950 (10th Cir. 2021); see also Kumpf v. New York State
United Tchrs., 2022 WL 17155847 (N.D.N.Y. Nov. 22, 2022).
                                                 8
       Appellant’s signing of the Membership Agreement constitutes an aﬃrmative

consent to pay dues. Accordingly, the facts of this case place it outside the scope of Janus.

As the Ninth Circuit noted in Belgau v. Inslee, a case factually similar to the one at hand,

“Janus [does not] recognize members’ right to pay nothing to the union . . . Janus does not

extend a First Amendment right to avoid paying union dues.” 975 F.3d 940, 951 (9th Cir.

2020). The Seventh Circuit, in another factually similar case, held that “Janus said nothing

about union members who . . . freely chose to join a union and voluntarily authorized the

deduction of union dues, and who thus consented to subsidizing a union.” Bennett v.

Council 31 of the Am. Fed'n of State, Cnty. & Mun. Emps., AFL-CIO, 991 F.3d 724, 732 (7th

Cir. 2021).

       The dangers of compelled speech that were the concern of the Court in Janus are

not at issue here. New York’s Taylor Law guarantees public employees the right to choose

whether to join the union as members, N.Y. Civ. Serv. Law § 202, and prohibits any union

or public employer from “interfer[ing] with, restrain[ing] or coerc[ing] public employees

in the exercise of their rights,” id. at § 209-a. It is undisputed that Appellant voluntarily

joined the Unions and authorized dues deductions from her wages when she signed the

Membership Agreement in 2018, which began with the statement “YES! I request and

accept membership in [the NHEU and] . . . NYSUT.” J. App’x at 27. Having the choice

to voluntarily join and resign from a union is the opposite of compelled speech. See

Belgau, 975 F.3d at 951.

                                             9
       Further, the First Amendment does not provide a right to “disregard promises that

would otherwise be enforced under state law.” Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663,

672 (1991). Appellant’s promise to join the Unions and pay dues unless and until

revocation during the “window period” was made in the context of a contractual

relationship between the Unions and Appellant. 3 Appellant does not dispute that when

she sent the required letter to the Unions during the August window period, the District

stopped deducting membership dues from her wages.

II.    APPELLANT’S FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT CLAIM

       Appellant’s Fourteenth Amendment claim that the deduction of union dues from

her paychecks was a violation of procedural due process also fails. To state a claim under

§ 1983 for a violation of procedural due process, a plaintiﬀ must: (1) identify a liberty or

       3
          To the extent that Appellant argues that her resignation from the Unions makes her a
nonmember who falls within the scope of Janus, she is incorrect. Unlike nonmembers, as the term
was used in Janus, who never agreed to join a union to begin with, Appellant aﬃrmatively entered
a voluntary contractual agreement that requires her to pay dues for a full year even if she resigns
her membership during the course of that year. See Bennett, 991 F.3d at 733 (“Having consented
to pay dues to the union, regardless of the status of her membership, [the plaintiﬀ] does not fall
within the sweep of Janus’s waiver requirement.”). Appellant is required to pay dues because of
the Membership Agreement she signed, which in eﬀect provides that by joining the Unions, she
agrees to be liable for a whole year’s dues, payable in installments, and that she can terminate her
liability by advising the union of her resignation at the end of the year, during a reasonable
window for revoking the contract’s automatic renewal. Nothing about that arrangement, which
is clearly spelled out in the Membership Agreement to which Appellant voluntarily consented,
violates the First Amendment. See Fischer, 842 F. App’x at 744 (rejecting argument that the opt-
out periods in state statutes and union membership agreements were unconstitutional); see also
Hendrickson, 992 F.3d at 964 (rejecting argument that “Janus should retroactively invalidate the
membership opt-out window because limiting [a plaintiﬀ’s] ability to terminate his dues
payments to two weeks a year violates the First Amendment right of association”).
                                                10
property interest, (2) show that the state has deprived the plaintiﬀ of that interest, and (3)

show that the deprivation was aﬀected without due process. Local 342, Long Island Pub.

Serv. Emps., UMD, ILA, AFL-CIO v. Town Bd. of Huntington, 31 F.3d 1191, 1194 (2d Cir.

1994). “Even if there is state action, the ultimate inquiry in a Fourteenth Amendment case

is, of course, whether that action constitutes a denial or deprivation by the State of rights

that the Amendment protects.” Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 155 n.4 (1978)

(internal quotation marks omitted). Appellant argues that “Defendants acted in concert,

by and through their agents and oﬃcials, to deduct and to accept union dues or fees from

[her] wages without providing her any meaningful notice or opportunity to object to the

ongoing deductions, the process by which the money was deducted, or the ways in which

her money [was] used.” J. App’x at 8. She claims that this was in violation of Teachers

Union, Local No. 1, AFT, AFL-CIO v. Hudson, 475 U.S. 292, 304–09 (1986) (“Hudson”), which

held that the First Amendment entitled non-union public employees in an agency shop

to procedures designed to prevent their money from supporting union political activity,

including a detailed accounting of how the union intends to spend dues.

       Appellant’s reliance on Hudson is misplaced. The premise of Hudson is that, under

the legal regime established by Abood—which permitted agency fees to be collected from

non-union public employees—there needs to be a procedure by which a dissenting

employee can challenge the calculation of agency fees. See Hudson, 475 U.S. at 304–09.

Post-Janus, however, public employers are not required to apply Hudson procedures

                                             11
because they are prohibited from imposing agency fees on non-union employees in the

ﬁrst place. Additionally, the holding of Hudson is inapplicable to union members. In

Hudson, the complainants were employees who chose not to join the union but were

nonetheless required to pay agency fees. Id. at 297. The case, therefore, has no application

to employees like Appellant, who voluntarily signed a union membership agreement and

contractually agreed to pay the full dues. Our resolution of the First Amendment

argument thus dooms Appellant’s Fourteenth Amendment claim because the latter

suﬀers from the same fatal ﬂaw as the former—namely, that Appellant voluntarily joined

the Unions. See Kumpf v. New York State United Tchrs., No. 22-CV-402, 2022 WL 17155847,

at *14 (N.D.N.Y. Nov. 22, 2022) (“Because Plaintiﬀ has failed to allege any First

Amendment violations and fails to allege that her agreement to pay union dues and to

continue paying union dues until the August 1–31 revocation period, even as a

[nonmember], Hudson’s procedures are inapplicable to Plaintiﬀ.”). Appellant proﬀers no

factual or legal basis to support a conclusion that the operation of such a private

agreement oﬀends principles of due process.

       Because Appellant was contractually obligated to pay union dues pursuant to the

Membership Agreement that she voluntarily signed, and the District’s withholding of

union dues did not constitute a violation of her First Amendment rights, Appellant’s

Fourteenth Amendment claim fails. See Wagner v. Univ. of Wash., No. 20-35808, 2022 WL

1658245, at *1 (9th Cir. May 25, 2022) (concluding that a plaintiﬀ “was not deprived of a

                                            12
constitutionally protected property interest when the University deducted and remitted

her voluntarily authorized dues”). Where, as here, “no protected liberty interest is being

impaired, no due process is required.” Cucciniello v. Keller, 137 F.3d 721, 724 (2d Cir.

1998); see also Hernandez v. Coughlin, 18 F.3d 133, 138 (2d Cir. 1994) (“Because we ﬁnd that

no state-created liberty interest has been interfered with, we need not consider what

process is due under the Fourteenth Amendment.”); Barnard v. Chamberlain, 897 F.2d 1059,

1066 (10th Cir. 1990) (“Our ﬁnding that appellees did not violate appellant’s ﬁrst

amendment rights similarly defeats his claim that he was deprived of a liberty interest

without due process of law.”).

                                       CONCLUSION

                  We have considered the Appellant’s remaining arguments and ﬁnd them to

be without merit. For the reasons set forth above, we AFFIRM the judgment of the

district court.

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