California Lawsuit Would Protect Local Governments Being Muzzled by State Laws

Local democracy stands as one of the most underappreciated hallmarks of our constitutional republic. Counties and municipalities are the elected bodies most directly accountable to the voters, but their size and scope relative to federal agencies leaves them too easily taken for granted.

It’s far more practical for a concerned citizen to voice his or her concerns locally than to travel to Washington, D.C., or their state capitol. But what happens when a state government enacts a series of laws whose sole intent is to prevent local governments from expressing views that reflect their constituents’ values?

Local democracy is rendered void and meaningless as the state, in essence, communicates to voters in local elections that their votes don’t matter.

Case in point, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors this month filed suit against the state’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) challenging laws designed to prevent public agencies from informing employees about their First Amendment right to decline union membership and dues payments.

California Government Code Sections 3550 and 3553 — the statutes challenged in this lawsuit — interfere with the board’s freedom to communicate truthful information about the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which affirmed the First Amendment right of public employees to decline union membership and dues deductions. These statues can best be characterized as California’s Gag Rule statutes because they coerce public employers into silence regarding a matter of public concern.

California’s Gag Rule distorts free discourse by making sanctionable any speech from a public employer that “deters or discourages” government employees from becoming union members and authorizing dues payments while doing nothing about speech that facilitates and encourages union membership and dues payments.

While this may appear innocent at first glance, PERB has interpreted and enforced the language of California’s Gag Rule to prevent public employers from informing employees about their God-given rights.

This also interferes with the right of government employees to receive truthful information from their employer.

The state of California has chosen to muzzle local governments through threats of legal penalties from PERB. This does a disservice to public employees statewide, leaving them dependent on unions — which have an obvious financial interest in withholding this information — to learn about their rights.

This approach only makes sense if the real motivation of the California lawmakers who concocted it is to curry favor with Big Labor rather than safeguard the rights of their constituents.

For employees generally satisfied with their union, the Shasta Board’s challenge to California’s Gag Rule in no way interferes with their rights to remain dues-paying members. A victory for the county would simply allow public employers to inform employees who feel otherwise that they have a choice in the matter.

Ultimately, this case is not about the merits of union membership — it’s about the First Amendment. The Shasta Board’s lawsuit is about the responsibility of local jurisdictions to reflect will of the public and communicate truthful information to government employees about their Constitutional rights.

It is also about the First Amendment right of those workers to hear from their elected officials on matters of public concern that directly affect them.

If the state of California has the power to suppress the speech of local governments seeking to communicate the truth regarding a Supreme Court decision, the implications for informed, transparent governance are chilling.

If state lawmakers can silence local governments for no reason other than political expedience, democracy in general is doomed.

This can’t happen. A victory for the Shasta Board in its lawsuit against PERB would remove a critical buttress to the future of local democracy in our nation.