No. 21-1640 ___________________________

Eric Brown; Jody Tuchtenhagen; Debbie Schultz, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated,

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiffs - Appellants,

v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council No. 5, AFL-CIO,

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellee. ___________________________

No. 21-1684 ___________________________

Mark Fellows; Alicia Bonner; Catherine Wyatt, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated,

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiffs - Appellants,

v.

Minnesota Association of Professional Employees,

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellee. ____________

Appeals from United States District Court for the District of Minnesota ____________ Submitted: February 16, 2022 Filed: July 25, 2022 ____________ Before LOKEN, COLLOTON, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges. ____________ COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.

These are appeals by current and former Minnesota state employees who seek damages for money deducted from their paychecks by unions that represented their local bargaining units. Although the Supreme Court held the deduction practice unlawful in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018), the district court* determined that the unions acted in good- faith reliance on state statutes and existing judicial precedent. Accordingly, the court ruled that the unions were entitled to a defense to liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and dismissed the employees’ claims. We agree, and therefore affirm.

Minnesota law permits public employees to bargain collectively with the State by designating a labor union to serve as the exclusive representative for employees in their bargaining unit. Minn. Stat. § 179A.06, subdiv. 2. Employees may decline to join the union. Id. If an employee chooses not to join, however, state law permits the union to require the employee to contribute a so-called “fair-share” fee equal to the cost of membership dues, less the cost of benefits available only to members. Id., subdiv. 3. The statute caps these fees at eighty-five percent of what the union charges for regular membership dues. Id. To collect fees from a non-member employee, the union must send a written notice to the employee’s public employer, at which point

* The Honorable Susan Richard Nelson, United States District Judge for the District of Minnesota.

-2- the employer is required to “deduct the fee from the earnings of the employee and transmit the fee” to the union after thirty days. Id.

In Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), the Supreme Court held that a similar regime permitting public-sector unions to compel the payment of fees from state employees who chose not to join the unions did not violate the First Amendment free speech rights of the employees. The Court concluded that the unions could extract fair-share fees from non-members so long as the fees were used to fund projects “germane to [the unions’] duties as collective-bargaining representative,” rather than ideological or political causes. Id. at 235-36. Forty-one years later in Janus, the Supreme Court overruled Abood. 138 S. Ct. at 2460. The Court held that public-sector unions violated the First Amendment by deducting fair- share fees from non-member emp