Oklahoma Corrections Professional Assoc., Inc. v. Jackso

The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit certified two questions under the Revised Uniform Certified Questions of Law Act. Plaintiff-Appellant Oklahoma Corrections Professionals Association having a membership of approximately nineteen hundred state employees, filed suit against Defendant-Appellee Oscar B. Jackson, Jr., Administrator and Cabinet Secretary for Human Resources, in federal district court. It sought a preliminary injunction prohibiting the termination of voluntary payroll deductions for members of the Corrections Association scheduled to terminate on January 31, 2011 along with preservation of the "status quo" which it defined as an order requiring reinstatement of dues collection through the voluntary payroll deduction program should payroll deductions be terminated before the district court could act. The Corrections Association alleged that the 2008 amendment was designed to eliminate, by doubling the membership requirements for voluntary payroll deductions, the organization as a rival to the Oklahoma Public Employees Association. The Corrections Association contended that its very existence was dependent on collecting membership dues through the payroll deduction system. It asserted that: 1) the Public Employees Association was unfairly exempted from the numerosity requirement; and 2) the new membership requirement should be invalidated as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The federal district court issued an order dismissing the Correction Association's federal claims for lack of standing and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over any state law claims. Specifically, the district court held that the Correction Association had not met standing requirements of redressability. Even assuming the statutory provision's unconstitutionality, it reasoned that: 1) striking the offending statutory subsection would not restore the availability of voluntary payroll deductions; and 2) because the Legislature would not have included the provision without the numerosity provision, severing the requirement would amount to "rewriting" the law. Thus the question from the federal district court, reformulated as a question of first impression for the Oklahoma Supreme Court was: "[w]hether the two thousand (2,000) membership numerosity requirement of 62 O.S. 2011 sec. 34.70(B)(5), if determined to conflict with constitutional guarantees of free speech, may be severed pursuant to 75 O.S. 2011 sec. 11a?" The Court answered the question "yes."View "Oklahoma Corrections Professional Assoc., Inc. v. Jackso" on Justia Law