State’s reason to stop union payroll deductions don’t hold up, Western District says

After a corrections officers’ union fought the state’s decision to revoke its payroll deductions, the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District affirmed a lower court’s position siding with the corrections officers.

The Missouri Corrections Officers Association (MOCOA) had operated as an employee association since 2000 and voted to become a union in 2004, and its members could opt in for payroll deductions to support MOCOA. On Dec. 6, the Western District determined MOCOA was eligible under both categorizations to collect money through payroll deductions, though the Missouri Office of Administration (OA) had denied MOCOA the ability to do that since 2019 in the middle of MOCOA’s labor agreement negotiations with the Department of Corrections.

Loretta Haggard of Schuchat, Cook & Werner in St. Louis represents the Missouri Correctional Officers Association.

“The state kept giving a moving target,” Haggard said.

In 2020, OA issued an emergency rule changing its definition of employee association to not participate in collective bargaining agreement negotiation, and soon after denied MOCOA’s application to restart payroll deductions.

MOCOA sued OA, and a trial court had agreed with MOCOA that OA’s suspension of and later refusal to allow payroll deductions was unlawful, arbitrary and capricious. It also agreed OA’s rules violated the Missouri Constitution. It ordered OA to resume MOCOA’s deductions and OA appealed.

According to the Western District opinion, the OA claimed that because MOCOA accepted 25 out of its more than a thousand members as retirees who were not currently employed by the DOC, it was not wholly a state employee association. It also claimed MOCOA stopped being an employee association when it became a union.

The Western District opinion written by Chief Judge Gary D. Witt disagreed with OA’s arguments and said that MOCOA fell under both categorizations.

“MOCOA did not have an existing labor agreement, but it was still a group of state employees governed by bylaws,” Witt wrote. “Therefore, it qualified as an employee association.”

Judges Mark D. Pfeiffer and Thomas N. Chapman concurred.

Deputy Solicitor General Maria Lanahan of St. Louis represents the Missouri Office of Administration and other appellants. Chris Nuelle, a spokesman for the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, did not respond to an email requesting comment.

OA also argued that the emergency rule did not violate the right to collectively bargain and the trial court, which had applied an equal protection analysis, did not need to apply any level of judicial scrutiny. The Western District agreed with the trial court.

“The practical result of the Rule is to give OA an unfair advantage in the negotiations by starving the labor union for dues funding during the contract negotiations process,” Witt wrote. “OA has failed to meet its burden of showing that its action was narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest.”

OA also had claimed that its rules regulating labor unions based on whether or not they have collective bargaining agreements did not violate MOCOA’s constitutional rights, but the Western District determined that they did.

The trial court had determined that it was unlawful, arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable for OA to deny MOCOA’s request to resume payroll deductions. On appeal, OA claimed that if MOCOA prevailed, the correct action was to allow MOCOA to apply once again with at least 100 signatures and consents, but again the Western District disagreed.

The opinion also noted that there was no legal recourse for the loss of revenue for MOCOA. Almost 1,300 MOCOA members had paid their dues via payroll deductions, and with no comparable revenue replacement, it was forced to reduce its staff from three people to one person.

“Here, the trial court found that MOCOA was receiving nearly $13,000 per month in dues revenue before payroll deduction was terminated in December 2019,” Witt wrote. “Following the termination of payroll deduction for DOC employees, MOCOA lost nearly all of its income.”

The case is Missouri Corrections Officers Association v. Missouri Office of Administration, WD84917.