Lawsuit Says Oregon’s New Union Law Punishes Anyone Who Tells Workers They Can Opt Out of Paying Union Dues
The Freedom Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging HB 3789, an Act relating to union misrepresentation, which took effect on January 1, because the new law imposed penalties as high as $1 billion for informing public employees of their Constitutional right to opt out of union membership.
Freedom Foundation Heads To Court Over New Union Rules
The Freedom Foundation filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon on December 31, challenging Oregon House Bill 3789, a law that allows public-sector unions to sue the organization for informing public employees about their constitutional rights, as the organization has been doing for many years.
In the lawsuit against Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, the Oregon Employment Relations Board, and five major public-sector unions, the organisation asked the court to block the law from taking effect on January 1 and to strike it down permanently as unconstitutional.
According to the Freedom Foundation, HB 3789 allows public-sector unions to sue them for $6,250 per piece of mail sent to workers explaining their right to opt out of union membership under the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision. This would add up to about $1 billion per mailing to Oregon’s public employees.
Here is the basic math behind the lawsuit claim about penalties per mailing.
| Example pieces sent | At $6,250 per incident | Total statutory damages |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 1,000 x $6,250 | $6,250,000 |
| 10,000 | 10,000 x $6,250 | $62,500,000 |
| 50,000 | 50,000 x $6,250 | $312,500,000 |
| 160,000 | 160,000 x $6,250 | $1,000,000,000 |
Note: This table shows scale only. A court decides what counts as an incident.
The 2018 Janus decision struck down forced union dues as unconstitutional. The plaintiff argues that the new law gives unions the power to bankrupt their most effective critic and that HB 3789 violates the First Amendment by discriminating on the basis of content and viewpoint, targeting political speech, forcing speakers to alter their messages, and operating as an unconstitutionally vague threat.
Oregon’s Union Membership Rate Is Far Higher Than the National Average
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that, in Oregon, 292,000 out of 1,835,000 workers were union members in 2024. Another 29,000 wage and salary workers were either represented by a union in their main job, or they were covered by an employee association or contract but were not union members themselves.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics / Union Members in Oregon 2024 and Union Members 2024 national release
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Since 1989, union membership rates in Oregon have been above the U.S. average. In 2024, union members accounted for 15.9 percent of wage and salary workers in Oregon. In 2023, this figure was 14.1 percent. 15.9 percent is significantly higher than the 9.9 percent of employed wage and salary workers accounted for by union members nationwide in 2024.