Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates
CHICAGO — The politically powerful Chicago Teachers Union is suing some of its harshest critics and ideological opponents, claiming a public relations and legal campaign the Illinois Policy Institute and others have waged against the union for years amounts to defamation and slander for making the controversial CTU politically "toxic."
The CTU filed its complaint in Cook County Circuit Court on Aug. 17, naming as defendants the Chicago-based Illinois Policy Institute, the Institute's vice president of marketing Austin Berg, and the Austin, Texas-based constitutional legal advocacy group, the Liberty Justice Center.
The CTU lawsuit centers on contentions that the Institute and its co-defendants have allegedly crossed the line by accusing the CTU of "cooking the books" in what critics of the CTU have contended amount to a bid to obscure how the union is spending member dues.
The CTU specifically accused the Institute and its co-defendants of a "deliberate, coordinated and ongoing smear campaign designed to inflict maximum reputational harm" on the CTU.
The CTU says the defendants have "executed that strategy by publishing articles and social media posts falsely accusing CTU of 'cooking the books,' fraudulent accounting, and engaging in 'potential criminal conduct,' among other acts of misconduct — despite knowing those accusations were untrue..."
The lawsuit comes as a dramatic escalation in the long-running political and legal tussle between the CTU and the Illinois Policy Institute, its staffers and allied organizations.
Throughout its existence, the Illinois Policy Institute has clashed with Illinois Democratic politicians, state and local governments and officials, labor unions and other predominantely left-wing groups over policy and spending priorities in Illinois, but particularly over efforts to use regulations, laws and tax increases to increase or cement their political power in the Democrat-dominated state and the city of Chicago.
However, their efforts have been particularly forceful, and apparently successful, at chipping away at the political power and prestige of the CTU.
For decades, the CTU has been a politically potent organization in Chicago and Cook County, and by extension, in Springfield, as well.
However, the union, under its current president, Stacy Davis Gates, reached perhaps the pinnacle of its political power to date, when they spearheaded the election of CTU member Brandon Johnson to be Chicago's mayor.
At the same time, however, the IIllinois Policy Institute has orchestrated a targeted campaign to turn the tide on the CTU and reverse its fortunes.
In recent years, that campaign has particularly borne highly visible fruit.
The Institute, for instance, was at the forefront of efforts to defeat the so-called Bring Chicago Home referendum, which was pushed by Mayor Johnson and his CTU allies, in a bid to sharply jack up the tax charged on the sale of properties in the city. Johnson and the CTU had claimed the tax would raise $100 million to alleviate homelessness in the city.
However, the Institute and other critics noted the CTU had already begun laying plans to claim much of the money to fund a long list of new contract demands, potentially including housing assistance payments for CTU member Chicago Public Schools teachers.
Years earlier, the Institute and the Liberty Justice Center had joined in the effort to win a Supreme Court ruling declaring that state governments and other public employers can't force employees to pay union dues to public employee unions, like the CTU.
In the years since, the Institute notably created websites specifically to inform public school teachers about their rights to not pay union dues, if they do not wish to.
But in more recent months, the Institute and LJC have trained their efforts on a campaign to draw attention to legal questions over whether the CTU was abiding by the law and its own bylaws in publishing annual financial audits that detail how the union is spending its members' dues.
The LJC notably is representing CTU members in a lawsuit claiming the CTU has violated their members' rights by refusing to release years' worth of financial audits.
The CTU has been unable to dismiss that lawsuit, which remains pending in Cook County Circuit Court.
As part of a public relations campaign surrounding the conflict over the audits, the Institute and LJC have either written articles or created social media posts accusing the CTU of "cooking its books." The posts and articles have questioned whether the CTU has engaged in "potential criminal conduct," allegedly including possible fraud, by allegedly making statements about the audits to the federal government that may conflict with what the union had told its members about the audits.
All told, the anti-CTU campaign has apparently proven successful outside of court, as well, as the CTU itself notes that its favorability ratings have declined from 70% to 28% among voters, according to polls.
At the same time, however, CTU leaders have also begun publicly clashing with prominent Illinois Democrats, including Gov. JB Pritzker, as they pursue legislation in the General Assembly to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to be directed exclusively to fund Chicago Public Schools, and the CTU, by extension.
In their lawsuit, the CTU claims the social media posts, articles and other statements from the Institute, LJC and Berg amount to an illegal coordinated campaign to slander and defame the CTU and make the CTU's reputation "toxic" in Illinois and beyond.
In an open letter to CTU members posted on its site, the CTU claims the anti-CTU campaign by the Institute and its allies is motivated by racism, particularly because the CTU is led by Gates, who is black.
The CTU's deputy general counsel Thad Goodchild said the Institute launched its campaign against the CTU "because they see the threat of Black women's leadership and assume that others will not defend Stacy (Davis Gates) or our union they way they would if they attacked others head on."
The CTU is demanding unspecified damages, including potential punitive damages, for six counts against all of the defendants.
The CTU is represented by attorneys John M. Owen, Robert A. Chapman, Robert J. Shapiro and Kurt W. Klinger, of the firm of Chapman Spingola LLP, of Chicago.
The Illinois Policy Institute and other co-defendants have not yet responded to the CTU lawsuit in court.
