On March 30, 2015, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted summary judgment to the Transport Workers Union, AFL-CIO in a suit brought by a group of airline employees who claimed that the union security provision of the Railway Labor Act was unconstitutional. Under the RLA’s union security provision, collective bargaining agreements may require all represented employees, whether members of the union or not, to pay their share of the union’s representational expenses. The suit, which was financed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and staffed by its attorneys, also claimed, without success, that various aspects of TWU’s agency fee payor procedure violated the First Amendment. See Serna v. Transp. Workers Union, Case No. 13-CV-2469 (N.D. Tex.) (Godbey, J.)
Cohen, Weiss and Simon LLP attorneys Peter DeChiara and Joshua Ellison were counsel to TWU.