Sweet v. California Association of Psychiatric Technicians ( 2019 )

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 8 EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 9 10 ALFRED SWEET, No. 2:19-cv-00349-JAM-AC 11 Plaintiff, 12 v. ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO DISMISS 13 CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF PSYCHIATRIC TECHNICIANS, et al., 14 Defendants. 15 16 This case arises out of Plaintiff Alfred Sweet’s attempt to 17 end his union membership. Alfred Sweet (“Plaintiff” or “Sweet”) 18 alleges the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians 19 (“CAPT”) violated his First Amendment rights to free speech and 20 free association by refusing to immediately accept his 21 resignation from union membership and by continuing to deduct 22 union dues from his paycheck (Count I). Sweet further alleges the 23 California laws which provide designated unions like CAPT with 24 exclusive representation of collective bargaining units, 25 including union nonmembers, are unconstitutional abridgements of 26 his First Amendment rights (Count II). 27 CAPT moves to dismiss Count II of the Complaint. Mot., ECF 28 No. 17-1. Sweet opposes the motion. Opp’n, ECF No. 24. 1 For the reasons set forth below, this Court GRANTS defendant 2 CAPT’s motion.1 3 I. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND 4 Plaintiff Alfred Sweet is a psychiatric technician employed 5 by the Atascadero State Hospital (“Atascadero”). Compl. ¶ 16. 6 Atascadero is a public hospital run by the California Department 7 of State Hospitals. Id. ¶ 17. CAPT is the exclusive 8 representative available to Sweet for collective bargaining with 9 California. Id. ¶¶ 28-30, 41, 56-58. Sweet became a member of 10 CAPT in January 2011, upon the start of his employment with 11 Atascadero. Id. ¶ 18. During his tenure with Atascadero, Sweet 12 has developed and raised concerns about CAPT’s management 13 practices and representation of its members. Id. ¶¶ 19-20. On 14 several occasions, Sweet requested to leave the Union, but the 15 Union denied his requests. Id. ¶¶ 21-22. Most recently, after 16 the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus, Sweet submitted a letter 17 to CAPT requesting to resign his membership and that CAPT stop 18 deducting dues from his paycheck. Id. ¶ 23. CAPT responded that 19 Sweet could not resign his membership except within the thirty- 20 day window prior to the expiration of the current collective 21 bargaining agreement, in this case June 1 to July 1, 2019. Id. 22 ¶¶ 24-25. 23 Sweet filed the Complaint on February 27, 2019, arguing (1) 24 CAPT violated his rights to free speech and free association by 25 refusing to allow Sweet to immediately withdraw from the union 26 27 1 This motion was determined to be suitable for decision without oral argument. E.D. Cal. L.R. 230(g). The hearing was scheduled 28 for July 16, 2019. 1 and by continuing to deduct union dues (Count I); and (2) 2 California’s exclusive representation provisions for collective 3 bargaining – namely California Government Code Sections 3515.5 4 and 3520.5 – violate the First Amendment by forcing him to 5 continue to associate with CAPT without his affirmative consent 6 (Count II). Compl., ECF No. 1. Sweet seeks declaratory, 7 injunctive, and monetary relief. Id. 8 CAPT has since accepted Sweet’s resignation, effective June 9 1, 2019, and has ceased deducting dues as of Sweet’s paycheck for 10 the June 1-15, 2019 pay period. Joint Response to Court, ECF No. 11 31. Nevertheless, Sweet remains a publicly-employed psychiatric 12 technician and thus CAPT continues to represent him in employment 13 negotiations with California. 14 II. OPINION 15 CAPT argues Sweet’s free association challenge in Count II 16 is barred by Minnesota State Bd. for Cmty. Colleges v. Knight, 17 465 U.S. 271 (1984) (“Knight”), and Mentele v. Inslee, 916 F.3d 18 783 (9th Cir. 2019) (“Mentele”). Mot. at 8-11. Sweet contends 19 that Knight and Mentele can be distinguished, and that the logic 20 of the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. Am. Fed’n of State, 21 Cty., & Mun. Employees, Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018) 22 (“Janus”), supports his contention that California’s statutory 23 scheme compels him to petition the government with a viewpoint 24 that is inconsistent with his own goals and priorities. Opp’n. 25 This Court agrees with CAPT. 26 A. Statutory Landscape 27 California law permits state employees “to select one 28 employee organization as the exclusive representative of the 1 employees in an appropriate unit, and to permit the exclusive 2 representative to receive financial support from those employees 3 who receive the benefits of this representation.” Cal. Gov’t 4 Code § 3512. The employees petition the state for recognition of 5 the selected union for exclusive representative status. Cal. 6 Gov’t Code § 3520.5. Once the exclusive representative is 7 certified by the state, “the recognized employee organization is 8 the only organization that may represent that unit in employment 9 relations with the state.” Cal. Gov’t Code § 3515.5. That 10 representation extends to matters including wages, hours, and 11 other conditions of employment. Cal. Gov’t Code § 3516. The 12 exclusive representative must “fairly represent each and every 13 employee in the . . . unit.” Cal. Gov’t Code § 3544.9. 14 B. Knight 15 In Knight, the Supreme Court considered a Minnesota law that 16 “provide[d] for the division of public employees into appropriate 17 bargaining units and establishe[d] a procedure, based on majority 18 support within a unit, for the designation of an exclusive 19 bargaining agent for that unit.” 465 U.S. at 273-75. The law 20 “require[d] public employers to ‘meet and negotiate’ with 21 exclusive representatives concerning the ‘terms and conditions of 22 employment,’” which included hours of employment, compensation, 23 and personnel policies. Id. Accordingly, employers could 24 “neither ‘meet and negotiate’ nor ‘meet and confer’ with any 25 members of that bargaining unit except through their exclusive 26 representative.” Id. A group of twenty Minnesota community 27 college faculty instructors, who were not members of the union 28 deemed the exclusive bargaining representative for college 1 faculty, challenged the law. Id. at 275-79. The Supreme Court 2 upheld the law, concluding that the nonmembers’ “speech and 3 associational rights . . . have not been infringed by Minnesota’s 4 restriction of participation in ‘meet and confer’ sessions to the 5 faculty’s exclusive representative. [Minnesota] has in no way 6 restrained [the nonmembers’] freedom to speak on any education- 7 related issue or their freedom to associate or not to associate 8 with whom they please, including the exclusive representative.” 9 Id. at 288. The Court continued, the nonmembers’ “associational 10 freedom has not been impaired. [They] are free to form whatever 11 advocacy groups they like.” Id. at 289. 12 Sweet has failed to distinguish the Minnesota law and 13 exclusive representation structure at issue in Knight from the 14 California laws he now challenges. He argues the “central issue 15 of the Knight decision is whether plaintiffs could compel the 16 government to negotiate with them instead of, or in addition to, 17 the union.” Opp. at 9. This Court disagrees. The Supreme 18 Court’s opinion, and the question presented, in Knight were not 19 confined to that one single issue. Knight, 465 U.S. at 273 (“The 20 question presented in this case is whether this restriction on 21 participation in the nonmandatory-subject exchange process 22 violates the constitutional rights of professional employees 23 within the bargaining unit who are not members of the exclusive 24 representative and who may disagree with its views. We hold that 25 it does not.”). 26 Thus, this Court finds that Knight squarely addresses, and 27 forecloses, the claim in Count II of the Complaint. 28 /// 1 C. Janus 2 Mr. Sweet nevertheless argues that the Supreme Court’s 3 decision in Janus “eroded the foundations of Knight” and 4 therefore this Court should revisit the question presented in 5 Knight. Opp. at 10-12. It is true that in Janus the Supreme 6 Court recognized, “Designating a union as the employees’ 7 exclusive representative substantially restricts the rights of 8 individual employees. Among other things, this designation means 9 that individual employees may not be represented by any agent 10 other than the designated union; nor may individual employees 11 negotiate directly with their employer.” 138 S. Ct. at 2460. 12 But the Supreme Court went no further, and the holding in Janus 13 is only that non-consensual agency fees charged by unions to 14 nonmembers are constitutionally impermissible. Id. at 2486. 15 In fact, Janus raises the exclusive bargaining unit issue 16 and, in the very next sentence, severs that issue from its 17 holding. Id. at 2478 (“It is also not disputed that the State 18 may require that a union serve as exclusive bargaining agent for 19 its employees—itself a significant impingement on associational 20 freedoms that would not be tolerated in other contexts. We 21 simply draw the line at allowing the government to go further 22 still and require all employees to support the union irrespective 23 of whether they share its views.”). Indeed, the overwhelming 24 focus of Janus is on freedom of speech, not association, and, 25 accordingly, Knight is never mentioned in Janus. And Janus even 26 seems to explicitly accept the constitutionality of exclusive 27 bargaining units, so long as they abide by their duty to 28 represent all employees fairly. Id. at 2469. The reasoning of 1 Janus therefore does not require the significant finding that 2 Knight has been overruled sub silentio. 3 Thus, this Court is not convinced it can, or should, 4 disregard the holding of Knight in light of Janus. 5 D. Mentele 6 Consistent with this Court’s preceding analysis, Mentele, a 7 post-Janus, binding Ninth Circuit case, reaffirmed Knight and 8 thus precludes Sweet’s free association claim. In Mentele, two 9 Washington state childcare providers challenged, on free 10 association grounds, the state’s authorization of a specific 11 union to act as the exclusive bargaining representative for all 12 of Washington’s publicly subsidized childcare providers, 13 including union nonmembers. Mentele, 916 F.3d 784–85; Wash. Rev. 14 Code § 41.56.080 (certified unions are “required to represent[ ] 15 all the public employees within the unit without regard to 16 membership.”). The Ninth Circuit analyzed both Knight and Janus, 17 found Knight’s precedent more directly applicable, and held that 18 Washington’s authorization of the exclusive bargaining 19 representative did not infringe the union nonmembers’ First 20 Amendment rights. Id. at 786-89. 21 Sweet argues Mentele can be distinguished because it 22 considered the rights of only “partial” state employees with 23 limited representation by the union, whereas Sweet is a full 24 public employee and CAPT claims full representation of him. 25 Opp’n at 13-14. This is a distinction without a difference. 26 Mentele’s primary reasoning is grounded in Knight’s analysis of 27 full public employees, and Mentele’s application of Knight is 28 therefore not limited to “partial” state employees. 1 Thus, this Court follows the Ninth Circuit’s post-Janus 2 reasoning in Mentele and finds that Sweet’s free association 3 claim fails. 4 EB. Conclusion This Court finds that Knight and Mentele foreclose Sweet’s 6 First Amendment associational challenge to the provisions of 7 California law, including California Government Code Sections 8 3515.5 and 3520.5, that provide for designated unions’ exclusive 9 representation of public employees. Bound by Supreme Court and 10 Ninth Circuit precedent, this Court declines to address the 11] parties’ remaining arguments regarding whether California’s 12 | statutory scheme impairs Sweet’s First Amendment rights and, if 13 | so, whether such an impairment is nevertheless permissible. Mot. 14} at 12-15; Opp’n at 15-20. This Court also rejects the free 15 | speech claim presented in Count II because Sweet’s opposition 16 | brief, which focuses exclusively on associational rights, seems 17 to concede any compelled speech claim, and because this argument 18 fails as a matter of law. See Knight, 465 U.S. at 288. 19 Therefore, Count II of the Complaint is dismissed for 20 | failure to state a claim. 21 Iti. ORDER 22 For the reasons set forth above, this Court GRANTS defendant 23 || CAPT’s Motion to Dismiss. ECF No. 17. Amendment being futile, 24] Count II of the Complaint is hereby DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE. 25 IT IS SO ORDERED. 26 Dated: August 27, 2019 27 kA 28 Geren aaa pebrsacr 00k