The Buckeye Institute wins union dues case for Perry Local Schools, Stark Area Regional Transit Authority
The Buckeye Institute recently won a union dues court case on behalf of two public school employees and a transit authority employee.
The case, Chandler v. OAPSE, was filed after the government unions, the Ohio Association of Public School Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, continued to take dues from the plaintiffs’ paychecks after they resigned their memberships.
Both unions agreed to return the dues charged to the plaintiffs after a court-ordered mediation.
“The unions—OAPSE and AFSCME—made the right choice and chose to refund dues from The Buckeye Institute’s clients after they had terminated their union membership,” Jay R. Carson, a senior litigator at The Buckeye Institute and the attorney representing the three plaintiffs, said in a release. “By refunding the dues taken, the unions have wisely ended a costly and protracted legal fight for all involved.”
The Buckeye Institute filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs in March 2025
Bus driver Kevin Chandler and bus aide Amy Clark, both employees of Perry Local Schools, resigned their memberships in OAPSE, requested that the union stop deducting dues from their paychecks, and were informed that the union had recognized their resignations.
OASPE continued to take money from Chandler and Clark’s paychecks through December 2024, after Chandler quit the union in April 2024 and Clark quit in August 2024.
The third plaintiff, Charles C. Perry Jr., is a technician with the Stark Area Regional Transit Authority and resigned from AFSCME in August 2024 after becoming disappointed in the union’s political positions.
Union officials for AFSCME also continued to take money from Perry’s paycheck through the end of the year despite acknowledging that he was no longer a member of the union.
The Buckeye Institute claimed that taking union dues from the plaintiffs’ paychecks was illegal under Ohio law because the contract between the union and the employee had been rescinded, and that charging union dues to nonmembers violated the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME.
The majority opinion in Janus ruled that an Illinois law requiring public employees to subsidize the unions selected by their coworkers, even if they chose not to join, violated the First Amendment rights of nonmembers.
Carson said that after the Janus ruling, some unions continued to charge dues to former members.
“Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, government unions have claimed that members can quit the union, but union officials will continue to take dues out of workers’ paychecks,” Carson said in a release. “This is a bit like the ‘Hotel California,’ where you can check out, but you can never leave.”
OAPSE and AFSCME, along with the State Employment Relations Board, claimed that SERB did not have jurisdiction in settling contract disputes between workers and unions.
State courts have previously claimed that only SERB has jurisdiction in union contract disputes.
The Buckeye Institute asked the court to prevent the unions from continuing to take money from the plaintiffs’ paychecks, refund both the money that had already been taken and attorney’s fees, and declare whether SERB or Ohio courts have jurisdiction in union contract dispute cases.
Chandler was dismissed by a Stark County judge in August 2025, and the Buckeye Institute filed an appeal in September 2025.
Ohio’s Fifth District Court of Appeals ordered a mediation after granting the appeal.
Ohio.news previously reported that the Buckeye Institute filed an appeal in a separate 2025 lawsuit on behalf of Matthew Sheldon, a school custodian who also continued to have dues removed from his paychecks by OAPSE after leaving the union.
The think tank asked the state Supreme Court to hear the case in December 2025. The Court accepted jurisdiction in Sheldon v. OAPSE on March 17.
