Juno Buendia, an elementary school music teacher, protests in front of the Greer Education Center on East Flamingo Road before a Clark County School District meeting Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. The teachers union (CCEA) and CCSD are currently in contract negotiations.
Published Monday, Oct. 9, 2023 | 11:36 a.m.
Updated Monday, Oct. 9, 2023 | 1:45 p.m.
The Clark County Education Association has filed a promised lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Nevada’s no-strike law for public employees, a group that includes teachers.
The lawsuit, filed in Clark County District Court today against the Clark County School District and the state of Nevada, asserts the law barring strikes by local and state government employees runs afoul of the free speech and due process provisions guaranteed by the U.S. and state constitutions.
It comes after a judge determined last month that CCEA was responsible for the first public-sector strike since they were outlawed more than 50 years ago.
In the complaint, the union argues Nevada’s anti-strike law “impermissibly impinges upon the fundamental rights of speech and association of CCEA and its members, is overbroad, void for vagueness, and is not narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest.”
“Strike activity, like all work actions generally, is a form of core political speech protected by fundamental rights to free expression and association,” the suit says.
The complaint also argues that penalties for striking are “draconian” and the legal definition of a “strike” is vague, such that the law “does not provide sufficient notice to enable persons of ordinary intelligence” to understand exactly what is prohibited.
The union teased the lawsuit during a march and rally Saturday in downtown Las Vegas.
“We are aware of and evaluating the complaint filed by CCEA against the state of Nevada and CCSD,” the school district said in a statement.
The suit is the latest entry in the legal saga between CCSD and CCEA, which represents CCSD’s 18,000 teachers, in their bitter fight over reaching a new teacher contract.
CCSD declared an impasse in its negotiations last month after 11 bargaining sessions failed to yield an agreement. The matter is now bound for arbitration, a historically slow-moving process that has yet to start. CCSD said it has an arbitrator but no hearing dates yet.
CCEA is also under a court injunction barring teachers from work stoppages like the rolling strike that a judge declared was underway in September, when eight schools closed for a day each because of a large number of teachers calling out sick.
Although the union denied involvement, Judge Crystal Eller said at that time there was “an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence that cannot be ignored” that a systematic strike had occurred.
Eller held the union responsible and ordered its officials to inform its members of the terms of the order, which it did.
CCEA appealed the injunction to the Nevada Supreme Court, which has yet to hear the case.
A panel of judges did, however, deny a motion by the union to stay, or delay, the injunction.
CCEA’s last contract with CCSD — which remains in effect until a new one is signed — contains a clause that the union agrees “there will be no strikes, stoppages of work or slowdown of the operations of the School District during the term of this agreement.”
There have been no school closures since the injunction was issued.
CCEA has connected striking to free speech rights before. Another District Court judge rejected an attempt, however, to throw out CCSD’s lawsuit that led to the injunction on free speech grounds last month.
The law defines “strike” broadly to include work stoppages, slowdowns, sickouts and interference with operations. Strikes by public employees have long been illegal, and even threats to strike are grounds for employers to seek an injunction.
The Government Employee-Management Relations Board, which is Nevada’s labor relations board, noted in its most recent newsletter that the September sickouts were “the first recorded public sector strike in Nevada since passage of the Government Employee-Management Relations Act in 1969,” the law that prohibits public-sector strikes.
The same state law CCEA seeks the court to void allows unions defying a no-strike order to be fined up to $50,000 per day, and officers up to $1,000 each per day.
Public employee unions that strike are also subject to being decertified, or losing their status as official employee bargaining representatives. (CCSD has filed such a complaint with the Employee-Management Relations Board. The case is pending.)
“The harshness of the penalties for engaging in a ‘strike’ should cause courts to scrutinize closely the standards for enforcement of the terms of (the anti-strike law), with great care and skepticism, where such fluid and ambiguous terms cannot give appropriate guidance to individuals regarding their conduct,” the union says in its suit.
Hearings on the suit filed today have not yet been set.
