Downtown Sacramento from the Capitol building. (Photo: Norcal_kt, Shutterstock)
Gag Rule Prevents California Public Employees from Knowing Their Constitutional Rights
No one can exercise a right they don’t know they have
By Ravi Prasad, November 18, 2025 2:15 pm
The First Amendment right of public employees to decline union membership and dues deductions was unambiguously affirmed seven years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME.
Unfortunately, no one can exercise a right they don’t know they have.
That was clearly the rationale of the California Legislature when the ruling was issued in 2018, as lawmakers responded by imposing an assortment of measures whose intent was to water down — if not invalidate outright — the court’s actions.
Among these were laws designed to prevent public employees receiving truthful information from their employers regarding union membership.
California Government Codes Section 3550 and 3553 can most appropriately be characterized as Gag Rule statutes because they shut down dialogue between public employers and employees regarding employees’ constitutional rights.
In March, the Freedom Foundation filed a constitutional challenge to the Gag Rule statutes on behalf of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors and a county employee.
After initial litigation in a trial court, the fate of the statutes now rests in the hands of California’s Third Appellate District.
The appeal presents high stakes for public employees across the state of California. These employees deserve to have all the information necessary to make informed choices about union membership and dues payments.
Even if a public employee were to ask his or her employer whether union membership is optional, California’s Gag Rule prevents that employer from truthfully telling the employee he or she has a right to abstain from union membership.
This is an egregious violation of public employees’ First Amendment right to receive truthful information — a right reflected in decades of Supreme Court precedent — because it leaves employees reliant on unions to access this information.
Obviously unions have no incentive to be candid with employees about their freedom to decide whether to join a union and pay dues.
On the contrary, it’s in their financial best interest to recruit and retain as many dues-paying union members as possible.
The Gag Rule is an especially onerous burden during new employee orientations. Under California law, unions are given an opportunity to address newly hired government employees on the supposed benefits of union participation.
Unsurprisingly, these informational presentations frequently deteriorate into a high-pressure sales pitch in which the truth is obscured.
The Freedom Foundation has received reports of unions locking workers in rooms, making them captive audiences for union recruitment.
One would think that public employers would be able supplement what the union is saying with factual information about union membership rights — except they can’t.
California law allows unions to run these new orientation gatherings pretty much as they please.
It doesn’t take a legal scholar to see the fundamental contradiction in expecting union organizers to present a balanced picture of what membership entails.
And knowing they can’t or won’t, the courts have an obligation to allow the Freedom Foundation to do the job for them.
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This is the flip opposite of when SCE embarked on an effort to bust the union representing their employees circa 1992. First a “consultant” softened up local managers, supervisors and foreman with touchy – feely, “team building,” kumbaya seminars. The brotherly love oozed everywhere. Then the program flipped hard with the same “consultants” beating the hell out those same local managers, supervisors and foremen with “you’re over 40 years old and you’ve never worked anywhere else, where you gonna go? You’re not gonna screw us, are you?” This originally had to do with when health care costs were exploding in the 80s and the company forced a health care plan that was designed to crash in a few years whereupon the company planned to shift health insurance responsibility on the union. The union retaliated by buggering the CEO out of his egoistic plan of acquiring SDG&E, which would have made SCE the largest investor owned utility in the nation. After the fsiled attempt, the CEO was booted, and the new regime embarked on busting the union.
Well, maybe that ended up being a good thing because SCE is now the cheapest of the “big three” electric utilities in the state (although, being this is California, the electric rates are still outrageous)
@Okatuon: There is a misperception about labor costs in a capital intensive business as opposed to a labor intensive business. In 1988, SCE’s total employee compensation, the entire workforce from the CEO to yesterday’s newly hired meter reader was less than 8 tenths of one percent of the total operating budget, with a restaurant it’s a far different story with both subject to economy of scale. The utilities do rip the public off, but it’s not by what most people believe, not by a long shot. To continue the above story, the company came within a few dollars of busting the union circa1992, but gave up before fait accompli. They then went to force attrition while resorting to contractors to make up for labor shortfall in order to neuter the union. The International split outside construction in socal from local 1245 to utility local 47 (representing SCE employees) in effect saying “utility hands, outside hands, either way you’re dealing with us.” I’m out of the loop now, “when all the faces change, you’re getting old.” I had worked in construction before hiring with the utility. I was originally very anti union but soon realized the company believed it owned its employees and what the faceless corporation would do to its employees without a union, and I have worked outside construction in a number of states and all around california There is a difference between outside contractors and a utility, between utility hands and outside hands, and a wide, wide gulf between the unions that represent electrical unions and government unions where government unions are merely yes men extensions of their government employers.
One last comment, then I’ll shut up. After the “consultants” softened up supervision and set about terrorizing them, supervision would practically crawl under their desks and pee themselves whenever the “consultants” entered the building. Then, remote from the reality of the lower end of the business, they thought they could buy out or run off experienced service planners (all who had at least been a lineman), hire an unskilled person off the street, run them through a two week training course and “tada! We have a qualified service planner!” It doesn’t work that way, and that’s part of how SCE got so goofy in a lot of things that really count. In the meantime, California state government is totally jacked up to begin with, and to forbid employees having the knowledge of their terms of employment rights is a political power play. Notice that everything the legislature does concerning business and employment is to wipe out small business and unionize what’s left?