Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates
CHICAGO — Saying Chicago's powerful teachers' union is using the courts to censor and retaliate against critics using satirical memes to pillory the politically influential labor group, one of the targets of a defamation lawsuit lodged by the Chicago Teachers Union has asked a Cook County judge to bring the legal action to a swift end.
On Oct. 26, constitutional legal advocacy group, the Liberty Justice Center, filed a motion in Cook County Circuit Court to dismiss the CTU's lawsuit.
"... Satirical cartoons, caricatures, and illustrations have been a quintessentially American way of mocking public figures since before there was a First Amendment, and they remain cherished expressions of protected speech to this day — even when those images insult, mock, taunt, and demean their subjects," the Liberty Justice Center wrote in a memorandum accompanying its motion.
"... This lawsuit against Defendant Liberty Justice Center (LJC) is a transparent attempt by the Plaintiff to chill criticism of its years-long failure to provide its members with annual financial audits as required by law, and to retaliate against LJC for representing the union members who sued Plaintiff over it."
The motion to dismiss lands a little more than two months since the CTU on Aug. 17 named the LJC as one of a group of co-defendants, who are accused of allegedly waging a years-long campaign to allegedly slander the CTU and make the controversial and powerful labor union politically "toxic."
Other defendants named in the lawsuit include the Chicago-based Illinois Policy Institute and the Institute's vice president of marketing, Austin Berg.
The CTU lawsuit centers on contentions that the LJC 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 lawsuit further escalated the long-running political and legal conflict 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 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 Illinois Policy Institute has orchestrated a targeted campaign to turn the tide on the CTU and reverse its fortunes.
The campaign has involved both public relations efforts and lawsuits designed to blunt the power of the CTU and other unions representing government workers to control governments in Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois and wrest control of worker dues and taxpayer money in the process.
Most recently, 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.
In early September, the CTU declared victory in that fight, when a Cook County judge ruled the law required him to accept the CTU's assertions that the union's decision to post only summaries of the audits is in keeping with the CTU bylaws requiring the union to publish "audited reports" for members.
The LJC has said they are appealing that ruling.
However, while the lawsuit remained pending, the two sides engaged in a public relations war over public perception of the matter, including in social media posts.
The CTU's lawsuit centered on particular posts, including two in which the LJC published "memes" on social media platform X. In one meme, dubbed the "Cracker Barrel" post, the meme, as described in the LJC's memorandum, included the text: “'@stacydavisgates, we ordered 4 audits. Will you check and see if they’re ready?' along with the phrase 'Cooked Books' in the style of Cracker Barrel’s iconic logo."
The other "meme," dubbed the "Thanksgiving meme," said: "'The only thing @CTULocal1 leadership knows how to serve is EXCUSES' along with the phrase 'cooking the books.'”
In its lawsuit, the CTU said those memes, in particular, amounted to defamation, as they allegedly accused the CTU of illegal behavior, potentially including fraud.
In response, the LJC said the social media posts did not include any accusations specific enough to rise to the level of defamation. Rather, they said, the "memes" are in the tradition of First Amendment-protected satirical cartoons, designed to express an opinion on matters of widespread public concern and to lampoon public, political figures seeking to gain power and access to the public purse.
The LJC said the CTU hasn't come close to proving the posts were designed to any "false statement of fact."
"The bottom line is that satirical cartoons are protected opinion. LJC’s memes cannot support a claim for defamation because any reader seeing the memes on social media would understand that the memes are hyperbolic rhetoric, not entries in an encyclopedia reporting facts about Plaintiff (the CTU)," the LJC wrote.
In the memorandum, the LJC further asked the court to order the CTU to pay their legal bills for having to defend against the lawsuit. The LJC said the lawsuit amounts to a legally forbidden lawsuit designed to silence criticism, or a so-called "strategic lawsuit against public participation" (SLAPP).
The LJC said the lawsuit is a violation of Illinois' anti-SLAPP law, because it targets the kind of speech that is protected under the state law and the First Amendment.
If a court determines someone has violated the anti-SLAPP law, the law allows the judge to order them to pay the legal bills racked up by their target in defending against the potentially illegal lawsuit.
In a statement issued when the LJC filed its motion to dismiss, Sara Albrecht, chairman and CEO of the Liberty Justice Center, said: "CTU members asked for financial transparency. When their union failed to provide it, we helped them go to court. Now the union is suing us over jokes about that very dispute.
“The First Amendment protects the right to criticize powerful institutions, including through satire. We will not let this lawsuit silence our advocacy for union members or our defense of free speech.”
The Liberty Justice Center is represented in the action by attorney David M. Friebus and others with the firm of BakerHostetler LLP, of Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
The court docket does not yet indicate if the Illinois Policy Institute has filed a similar motion to dismiss.
