As attacks on equal rights and equal opportunity intensify, there occurs a corollary erosion of democratic rights. Opposition to school privatization, growing inequality, and increasing disparities in the distribution of wealth are increasingly viewed by the authorities as threats that must be suppressed.
Over the last period, teachers (unionized teachers in particular) have suffered particularly intense attacks on their right to due process, free speech and assembly. UEAALDF has successfully defended several teacher activists who were targeted for their defense of public education or their resistance to “teach to the test” curriculum.
Teachers’ Rights to Freedom of Assembly
Stephen Conn and Heather Miller are long-time activists and leaders in the Detroit Federation of Teachers. In May 0f 2007, they took personal days off from work to attend a rally against school closings in Detroit as private citizens. The Detroit Public Schools police, without provocation, decided to disperse the completely peaceful march and rally, composed predominantly of students ages 10-18, by pepper spraying the crowd and then carrying out mass arrests. The Detroit Board of Education then fired Conn and Miller for participating in the march, and allegedly “endangering children”. There was no evidence that they had done anything other than stand on the outskirts of the rally. After an extended hearing at the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, the two were completely exonerated.
Merc ruling on Conn-Miller Case
Teachers’ Rights to Freedom of Speech
In a small district in Ohio, a teacher decided to involve her students in a lesson about the subject addressed in the book “Fahrenheit 451″. She asked her students to do research on books that had been banned by school districts in the United States in the recent period. In response, two students brought in “Heather Has Two Mommies” and one student brought “Siddhartha” to school. The teacher was summarily fired when this was brought to the attention of the Principal and the School Board. UEAALDF took on the case at the Appeals Court to defend the teacher’s First Amendment rights.
Appeals brief on a Teacher’s Right to Free Speech
Teachers’ Right to Protection By Wage & Hours Laws
In December of 2009, Robert C. Bobb, the Emergency Financial Manager for the Detroit School District, reached a tentative agreement with the President of the Detroit Federation of Teachers that provided for the deduction of $250 per pay period from the wages of all salaríed employees covered by that agreement for a total of 40 pay periods beginning on January 12, 2010. This pay deduction was described as a “loan” that would be reimbursed when teachers left the district; yet it stipulated that teachers with less than 10 years seniority would not get reimbursed, nor would anyone who was terminated.
The teachers filed a lawsuit against these provisions since they essentially constituted unlawful “kickbacks” to their employer for which they had not given their individual consent, as required by law.
Detroit Teachers Wage & Hours Lawsuit
Detroit Teachers Wage & Hours Ruling