U.S. Northern Illinois District Judge John Kness rejected a group of UChicago graduate students’ request to block their union, Graduate Students United-United Electrical (GSU-UE), from forcing them to pay dues, on the grounds that the students’ First Amendment rights were not violated by the collective bargaining agreement.
The group, Graduate Students for Academic Freedom (GSAF), had asked the court to strike down the clause of GSU-UE’s contract that requires non-union member graduate students to pay agency fees, and to grant members of GSAF relief for fees they had paid in the past.
A provision of GSU-UE’s collective bargaining agreement with the University states that all graduate students choosing not to pay dues and become union members must pay equivalent agency fees to fund union activities. Non-members who pay agency fees do not vote in union elections or run for office.
GSAF, an anonymous group of graduate students, alleged in a July 2024 lawsuit that these agency fees forced them to associate with and financially support GSU-UE despite their opposition to the union’s pro-Palestinian activism.
The National Labor Relations Act allows unions and non-governmental employers to sign “union-security agreements,” which require dues for both members and non-members as a term of employment. However, GSAF argued that GSU-UE stepped beyond traditional employment negotiations in its pro-Palestinian advocacy and that the sole collective bargaining power held by GSU-UE was unconstitutional, as all graduate workers are required to fund the organization as a condition of employment.
In 2022, GSU affiliated itself with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) and, in 2024, signed its first contract with the University, giving the union sole bargaining power for all graduate student workers, including teaching assistants, graders, and lecturers.
In May 2024, during UChicago United for Palestine’s (UCUP) encampment in the main quad protesting the Israel-Hamas War, GSU-UE reaffirmed its commitment to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and called for UChicago to “divest from Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine.” Following the encampment’s removal from the quad, GSU-UE joined the UCUP coalition.
GSAF objected, calling the union’s statements antisemitic and saying that students should not be legally compelled to fund it. “Graduate students must associate with—and indeed fund—an ideological group that they abhor, as the price of continuing with their research and teaching,” the group said in the complaint. “That sort of levy on the ability to pursue a student’s work is anathema to academic freedom.”
According to the complaint, since the union’s ability to collect funds from both members and non-members is the result of federal law, the agreement should be subject to the First Amendment.
In his decision, Kness rejected GSAF’s argument that the bargaining agreement with the University was grounds for state action, ruling that “the agency fee arrangement negotiated between the University of Chicago and the Union does not satisfy the state action requirement and thereby does not raise a First Amendment issue.”
Neither GSU-UE nor GSAF responded to a request for comment.
