by Corinne Murdock | Aug 7, 2021 | Education, News
By Corinne Murdock |
The Goldwater Institute announced Thursday that it will represent a mother sued by the National Education Association (NEA) for daring to look into her school’s curriculum. The NEA is the largest teachers unions in the nation, with over $300 million to spend.
The Rhode Island mother, Nicole Solas, was slapped with the lawsuit on Monday. The NEA requested that the court prohibit the release of the records Solas sought. They alleged in their lawsuit that those records would cause teachers to be targeted and harassed by conservatives. Solas sought records pertaining to the teaching of critical race theory and gender theory, among other controversial topics.
“It is anticipated that teacher records will be produced that will be of a personal nature and will contain the identities of the teachers engaged in the personal communication as well as other communications that relate to the personal issues, disciplinary issues, performance issues, medical issues and issues not related to the official business of the School Department,” wrote the NEA. “[T]eacher emails will be produced that may or will continue discussion about critical race theory curriculum or other issues of ‘interest’ to the requestors that will contain individual teachers’ names and personally identifying information. Given the circumstances of the requests, it is likely that any teachers who are identifiable and have engaged in discussion about things like critical race theory will then be the subject of teacher harassment by national conservative groups opposed to critical race theory.”
Further, the NEA argued that not all records kept by public bodies were public record. It added that redaction of those records wasn’t always sufficient to ensure privacy.
In a press release, Goldwater Institute National Litigation Director Jon Riches assessed that this lawsuit is contrary to Solas’s rights as a parent and citizen.
“This brazen and unprecedented act of intimidation by the NEA will not stand,” said Riches. “Nicole Solas is entitled to know what her daughter’s school is teaching in the classroom. She’s entitled to ask questions. And she does not deserve to face legal action just for asking questions any concerned parent would ask.”
The debacle began when Solas submitted open records requests to her district this spring about the curriculum exposed to her daughter, as well as teacher correspondence
Ultimately, the district said it would cost Solas $74,000 to obtain the records. District policy states that they may charge 15 cents per page, and/or $15 per hour after the first hour of records retrieval. If the district was charging by the hour alone, it would take them a little over 4,900 hours, or 548 days (estimated based on 9 hour work days).
The lawsuit noted that the district released 6,500 pages of documents. That would cost about $975.
Solas hasn’t been discouraged by the lawsuit. Rather, she said that this would only help to further her cause for transparency.
“The NEA is so determined to push its political agenda that they are willing to expose themselves in a court of law for who they really are: an association of bullies eager to challenge a stay-at-home mom who simply wanted to know what her daughter would be taught,” said Solas. “This lawsuit won’t deter me from asking questions, and I encourage all parents to do the same, so that they are empowered to make informed decisions regarding their children’s education.”
The local NEA chapters, the National Education Association of Rhode Island (NEARI) and the National Education Association South Kingstown (NEASK), filed the lawsuit.
NEARI Deputy Executive Director Jennifer Azevedo said that NEA supports open records but believes that the interests of privacy outweigh the public interest in this case.
“We are asking the Court to conduct a balancing test to determine whether our members’ privacy rights outweigh the public interest,” said Azevedo. “We believe they do, and those records should either not be disclosed or should be redacted accordingly.
The NEA also named the school committee of Solas’s district, South Kingstown School District, as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinnejournalist@gmail.com.
by Corinne Murdock | Aug 5, 2021 | News
By Corinne Murdock |
Over 50 property owners are seeking over $23 million in claims due to Flagstaff’s latest regulations on property rights. The Goldwater Institute is representing the property owners; the think tank noted in their announcement last month that “thousands more” could have viable claims against the city, too. Since then, Goldwater Institute Executive Vice President Christina Sandefur informed AZ Free News that more property owners have stepped forward to file a claim. Flagstaff has 90 days to respond to the pending claims.
Flagstaff passed an ordinance in March, the High Occupancy Housing Plan, that restricted residential and mixed-use property improvements. The city’s plan offered a wide scope of regulations, including a limit on the density and number of bedrooms and units in a property, as well as certain automobile and bicycle parking standards.
In a press release, the Goldwater Institute pointed out that state law – Prop 207, or the Private Property Rights Protection Act – requires Flagstaff to pay individuals whenever they take away their right to use their property. The institute argued further that the restrictions on renovations, improvements, or further property developments constituted a taking away of rights.
“Flagstaff’s ordinance is exactly the kind of government overreach that Arizona voters sought to guard against,” asserted the think tank. “That’s a costly burden on property owners, it’s unconstitutional, and it’s why the Goldwater Institute is seeking relief on their behalf under the Private Property Rights Protection Act.”
Under Prop 207, current recourse for Flagstaff property owners entails writing a letter to the city requesting payment for any property value diminishment the restriction caused, or for the city to waive certain restrictions entirely. Sandefur says that if proper recourse isn’t offered, they will take legal action.
“Under Proposition 207, the city has 90 days to decide whether to pay the property owners for taking their rights away, or whether to give them their rights back,” explained Sandefur. “We are hoping that the city does the right thing so that these claims don’t have to turn into litigation, which will be time-consuming and costly for the city.”
Flagstaff’s High Occupancy Housing Plan claimed that there would be no financial or policy impacts. The plan was considered an advancement to the city’s 2018 High Occupancy Housing Specific Plan (HOH Plan).
The Goldwater Institute clarified that it hasn’t filed any lawsuits for these claims to date.
AZ Free News reached out to the city of Flagstaff for comment. They didn’t respond by press time.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinnejournalist@gmail.com.
by Goldwater Institute | Jul 29, 2021 | Education, Opinion
By the Goldwater Institute |
The public’s business should be open to the public. And under Rhode Island law, it is. Yet when mom Nicole Solas sought to attend the meeting of a publicly funded committee that meets weekly to discuss and make recommendations on policies that apply across her daughter’s school district, she was told that the meeting was closed and parents were not welcome.
Now, the Goldwater Institute is pushing back: We’ve joined with the Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights in Rhode Island to represent Nicole in a complaint before the state attorney general asserting that the school district has violated Rhode Island’s Open Meetings Act (OMA) by closing these meetings to the public.
Rhode Island’s OMA was enacted to ensure that “public business be performed in an open and public manner and that the citizens be advised of and aware of the performance of public officials and the deliberations and decisions that go into the making of public policy.” The presumption under that law is always in favor of public access.
Yet in March 2021, the South Kingstown School Committee signed an agreement with the South Kingstown BIPOC Advisory Board to hold weekly meetings where district policies ranging from student discipline to coaching to hiring would be discussed and where recommendations would be made on those issues by the Board to the School Committee. In other words, the Board was charged with advisory power by the School Committee over matters of significant public interest—the education of South Kingstown’s youth. The Board is also publicly funded with taxpayer dollars by the School Committee, and two members of the School Committee’s subcommittee on policy sit on the Board.
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by Goldwater Institute | Jul 25, 2021 | Opinion
By Christina Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute |
Representing the owners of more than 50 properties, the Goldwater Institute has filed over $23 million in claims against the city of Flagstaff, Arizona, over an ordinance that went into effect in March that deprives residents of their property rights. That could be just the tip of the iceberg, as thousands more may have claims under state law.
In March, Flagstaff adopted a High Occupancy Housing Plan supposedly designed to address an increase in student housing. In actuality, the plan imposes sweeping regulations that deprive a wide variety of property owners, including families and small businesses, of their right to decide what to do with their land.
Flagstaff’s ordinance comes nearly two decades after the infamous Kelo v. New London U.S. Supreme Court decision of 2005, in which the Court gave state officials virtually carte blanche to seize private property for whatever reasons politicians consider worthwhile. But Arizona voters rejected the Court’s vast expansion of government power by adopting a ballot measure that creates some of the strongest protections for home and business owners in the country. Under Arizona’s Private Property Rights Protection Act (known as Prop 207), government must pay people whenever it takes away their right to use their property and thereby diminishes its value…
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by Terri Jo Neff | Jul 14, 2021 | News
By Terri Jo Neff |
Attorneys for the Goldwater Institute and the City of Phoenix will be in court Wednesday to argue over whether government workers subjected to a collective bargaining agreement can be forced to finance union activities, including a union’s political endeavors.
The issue before Judge Daniel Martin of the Maricopa County Superior Court is a legal challenge brought on behalf of two city employees over a practice known as “release time” approved by the Phoenix City Council in 2019. Release time allows some city employees to be paid to work for their private union instead of working for the public.
Employees utilizing release time are allowed to engage in activities such as lobbying, union membership drives, filing grievances against the employer, and wage and benefit negotiations. Release time activities of city employees are subject to the discretion and control of the union, not the city which pays the employees.
In May 2019, the City of Phoenix signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Local 2384, Field Unit II (AFSCME) which serves as the exclusive bargaining unit for a wide range of public workers, including but not limited to electricians, mechanics, security guards, street technicians, and maintenance workers.
AFSCME is the nation’s largest public services employees union with more than 1.3 million working and retired members. The MOU applied to all City of Phoenix employees assigned under Field Unit II whether union members or not, and it provides for myriad release time benefits, including four full-time release positions.
“That means that four city employees are released full-time to work exclusively for the union at the public’s expense,” according to the Goldwater Institute, which also noted nearly 3,200 additional paid work hours are available to other union representatives. That is roughly equivalent to 80 weeks of full-time work.
The MOU between Phoenix and AFSCME also guarantees compensatory time for high-ranking union officials using release time, as well as additional hours and payment for AFSCME members who attend union seminars, lectures, conventions, and workshops.
In October 2019, attorneys with the Goldwater Institute sued the City of Phoenix on behalf of two Field Unit II city employees who contend the release time salaries and benefits in the MOU are funded by all government employees of a specific bargaining unit.
The result, the lawsuit argues, is that non-union members are forced to fund union activities in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, along with Arizona’s Right to Work laws and other state constitutional provisions, the employees contend. The lawsuit also contends the four full-time release time employees “are not contractually required to provide an accounting to the City for how they use release time.”
Judge Martin will hear oral arguments Wednesday and Friday in dueling motions for summary judgment filed by the parties. Court records show AFSCME has been granted intervenor status in the case.
Among the organizations also opposed to release time policies is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which has developed draft legislation that lawmakers across the country can use in an effort to ban paid union activity by public employees.
Under the ALEC draft legislation, it would be “against public policy” for a public employer like the City of Phoenix to enter into a deal with any private union to compensate a public employee for union activities.
“While public employees should not be prohibited from freely associating outside of their employment duties, including hiring individuals to help represent their interests, this should occur at public employee, not taxpayer, expense,” according to the ALEC website.
