California teacher says Kamala Harris tried to silence her over union fees
A former California school teacher blasted Kamala Harris and Democrats at the Republican National Convention Monday for their role in fighting a lawsuit against the California Teachers Association to challenge fair share fees.
“Democrats stand with deceptive teachers unions who pick on loving teachers and little kids,” Rebecca Friedrichs said. “President Trump stands with America’s families, great teachers, and most importantly our children.”
Friedrichs’ suit against CTA reached the Supreme Court in 2016, where justices after Antonin Scalia’s death deadlocked on her case and allowed the union to continue collecting fair share fees from teachers who had not opted into the organization.
It turned out the loss was just a temporary setback for public employees who wanted to break from unions.
The Supreme Court in a 2018 lawsuit known as Janus vs. AFSCME held that public employee unions cannot collect any kind of fee from workers unless the members choose to be a part of the labor organization.
Friedrichs was among several speakers at the first night of the GOP convention Monday who stressed the theme of freedom from what they called big, intrusive government. And she used Harris, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee who was the state’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017, as an example of what Friedrichs finds appalling.
“To fight back on behalf of children and America, brave teachers brought a lawsuit against unions, and do you know who intervened against us?” she asked. “The Obama-Biden Administration and California Attorney General Kamala Harris! They argued against us at the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Friedrichs maintained that “their comrades labeled us “spawns of satan,” and “slandered us in mainstream media.”
But, she said, “No matter their abuse, we’ll keep fighting for the country and children we love, just like President Trump. He’s breaking the unions’ grip on our schools; that’s why unions have tried to destroy him since the day he was elected.”
Trump will keep fighting, she says. “His courage gives great teachers renewed hope,” Friedrichs said.
Among his plans are to promote “education freedom scholarships to return control to parents, protect religious liberties, and empower kids to escape dangerous, low-performing schools.”
Friedrichs, an Orange County elementary school teacher, in 2018 told The Bee she was a former union supporter who grew disenchanted with CTA over what she regarded as political activism.
“It was all politics,” she said. “I thought my money was going to a labor union to protect me as a worker.”
Monday, she told the convention, “I’m here to give voice to America’s great teachers because our voices have been silenced for decades by unions who claim to represent us. They do not.
“When other dedicated teachers and I served within the unions, we spoke up in defense of children, parents, scientific fact and American values. For our trouble, we were brutalized, booed off the platform, barred from committees, shouted down, and even spit upon by union leaders.”
Too many teachers, Friedrichs said Monday, have “intentionally rewritten American history to perpetuate division, pervert the memories of our American Founders, and disparage our Judeo-Christian virtues.”
Unions, she said, collect billions annually from “unsuspecting teachers and push this radical agenda into our classrooms against our will. Why? The only way to keep a free Republic is with a well-educated, moral citizenry that can self-govern.”
This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 5:49 PM.
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