A little more than a week after Governor JP Pritzker signed a new law aimed at curtailing “captive audience” meetings – a strategy sometimes employed by businesses to dissuade workers from forming a union – a libertarian group filed suit to prevent the law from going into effect.
Read more: Under new law, Illinois employers can’t force workers to sit through anti-union meetings
The Chicago-based Illinois Policy Institute on Thursday sued the Illinois Department of Labor in federal court, claiming the “Worker Freedom of Speech Act” violates employers’ First Amendment rights. The law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, makes it illegal for companies to punish their workers for opting out of a meeting in which they’d be subjected to the employer’s views on religious or political matters, or rewarded for attending.
Workers who believe they were unfairly retaliated against for not attending such meetings can take their employer to court under the law, while the IDOL can levy fines of $1,000 per violation.
During negotiations over the Worker Freedom of Speech Act this spring, advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois worried the law would prevent nonprofit organizations from being able to communicate about the nature of their work. As a result, advocacy organizations like the ACLU – a 501(c)4 – as well as labor organizations designated as 501(c)5s and trade associations with 501(c)6 status were exempted from the law.
But traditional charities and churches with 501(c)3 designations were not exempted. The Illinois Policy Institute sued in its capacity as a 501(c)3, claiming the law “bans the Institute from communicating with its employees during mandatory meetings” about policy proposals despite the policy being “one of the principal purposes of the Institute.”
Absent from the lawsuit, however, is any acknowledgment of the IPI’s twin organization, Illinois Policy, which is organized as a 501(c)4 and shares leadership, staff, facilities, and a website with the IPI and has an identical board of directors. After its offshoot launch a decade ago, Illinois Policy became the entity under which IPI’s lobbyists were registered, while both groups expanded their overall footprint under the same branding.
The IPI has been a frequent plaintiff in recent years in unsuccessful efforts to prevent Illinois voters from weighing in on the “Workers Rights Amendment” on the November 2022 ballot and a graduated income tax in November 2020, which ultimately failed.
