Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LABOR—UNIONS, UNION MEMBERS—S.D.N.Y.: Legal Aid attorneys who criticized union’s pro-Palestine resolution partially advance claims, (Jul 16, 2025)

By Todd Harrison, J.D.

Attacking the resolution as antisemitic, the attorneys alleged the subsequent filing of disciplinary charges infringed on their protected rights to protest discrimination, file lawsuits, and speak freely.

Finding that two Legal Aid attorneys had stated claims under the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMDA), at least as to their local chapter of The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys (ALAA) and members of its Amalgamated Council, a federal district court in New York denied the defendants’ motion for summary judgment as to this claim. However, the court did dismiss the attorneys’ retaliation claims under Title VII, the NYSHRL, and the NYCHRL because their state-court lawsuit did not oppose any discrimination made unlawful by those statutes. Even so, whether or not their state-court lawsuit opposed actionable discrimination, the ALAA and its officers were barred from disciplining the attorneys in retaliation for that lawsuit, explained the court (Kopmar v. The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, No. 24-CV-5158 (JPO) (S.D.N.Y. July 15, 2025)).

The ALAA is a member organization of the UAW and has a complex organizational structure with multiple governing entities. A Joint Council comprises the constitutional officers along with representatives of each of the ALAA chapters. An Amalgamated Council is also comprised of constitutional officers and representatives, but with different representatives than those on the Joint Council. The Amalgamated Council has the power to review internal disciplinary charges filed by members against other members and determine whether such charges are “proper” to proceed to trial under the UAW constitution.

Resolution. On November 14, 2023, the Joint Council submitted to the membership a resolution that the attorneys characterized as “an 1,147-word diatribe against Israel.” The resolution, among other things, advocated for “governments to stop all military funding for Israel,” and “public support for Palestinian freedom.”

TRO. Two days after the Joint Council approved the resolution for a vote and one day before the membership voted, the attorneys sought a temporary restraining order in New York state court. The court issued a TRO. After removing the action to federal court, the TRO was dissolved and the attorneys elected not to further pursue a preliminary injunction, voluntarily dismissing the action.

Harassment. While their lawsuit was pending in state court, the attorneys alleged that they were subject to retaliatory harassment by their fellow union members, including in the form of messages on an internal listserv.

Disciplinary charges. This alleged harassment campaign escalated to the filing of formal union disciplinary charges by four ALAA members alleging, among other things, contravention of internal union decisions and the chilling of free speech. The charges were forwarded to the Amalgamated Council, which approved the charges. The attorneys appealed this approval up the chain and the charges were ultimately dismissed on March 17, 2025.

Lawsuit. On July 8, 2024, while the appeal of their disciplinary charges was still pending, the attorneys filed this lawsuit, alleging that the charges had the effect of chilling their engaging in protected activity “in opposing the ALAA’s continued discriminatory anti-Semitic environment.” The defendants include the ALAA, members of the Amalgamated Council, and the four rank-and-file members who filed the disciplinary charges against the attorneys.

Anti-discrimination statutes. The attorneys asserted retaliation claims against the union under Title VII and the NYSHRL; aiding and abetting claims against the individual defendants under the NYSHRL; and retaliation claims against both the union and the individual defendants under the NYCHRL.

While the standards for stating a retaliation claim under the state statutes is more lenient than under Title VII, all require that the retaliation be because of a plaintiff’s prior conduct that opposed or challenged something prohibited by that statute, explained the court.

Here, the court found that the attorneys’ state-court lawsuit did not allege the minimum facts needed to state an ordinary discrimination claim under any of the three statutes. They had failed to identify any instances in which they were treated poorly relative to their colleagues, much less that any such treatment was based on a protected attribute, observed the court. The complaint and request for a TRO included only spare references to antisemitism and only in the context of describing the contents of the resolution.

First Amendment issues. Moreover, because the resolution was political speech on a matter of public concern, the case was imbued with First Amendment overtones. Title VII, the NYCHRL, and the NYSHRL must respect the fundamental principle that governments may not restrict expression because of its content, explained the court.

In this instance, the resolution constituted pure political speech, criticizing a series of policies with which its drafters disagree, neither identifying nor targeting any individual group on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality, observed the court.

“Reading antidiscrimination laws to prohibit the voicing of views critical of a foreign state, or support thereof, would raise serious doubts about their constitutionality,” said the court, explaining that this was an outcome to avoid. Because the attorneys’ state-court lawsuit challenged speech that the antidiscrimination laws may not constitutionally prohibit, their lawsuit could not constitute protected activity under those laws.

Because one could not reasonably read the state-court lawsuit as stating claims under the anti-discrimination statutes, the defendants’ response to that lawsuit could not form the basis of a retaliation claim under those statutes, explained the court. Further, because the attorneys did not state a retaliation claim at the entity level under the NYSHRL, there could be no aiding and abetting liability under that statute either.

LMRDA claims. Next, the court considered the attorneys’ claims under the LMRDA. Here, whether viewed as “infringement” of the attorneys’ Section 101 rights or as “discipline” prohibited by Section 609, the ALAA may be liable if the charges against the attorneys were based on their protected conduct. Given that members of the ALAA filed the charges and the ALAA defended their propriety, the court found that this was sufficient to at least state an infringement claim if not a discipline claim.

Individual defendants. In response, the individual defendants argued that they were not liable under the LMRDA, either because they discharged their ordinary duties to the union (the Amalgamated Council defendants) or because they filed the charges in their individual capacities (the charging defendants).

As to the Amalgamated Council defendants, the court disagreed. Section 609 expressly contemplates liability for officers, agents, and employees of labor unions. While Section 102 expressly names only labor organizations, the Second Circuit has long held that such suits may be brought against individual defendants.

Here, the complaint adequately pled conduct—approving of allegedly unlawful disciplinary charges and allowing them to proceed to trial—that fell within the scope of the aforementioned sections. Whether the Amalgamated Council defendants approved the charges in good faith is fraught with contested issues of material fact, observed the court, and such questions were not appropriate to consider on a motion to dismiss.

Charging defendants. Conversely, liability for violating Section 101 of the LMRDA extends only to individuals acting “under color of union authority.” Thus, the charging defendants could not be held liable under the LMRDA as they were not union officials and were not acting as union agents.

Right to sue. This left the only remaining question of whether the ALAA’s charges were filed in connection with the attorneys’ exercise of the Section 101 protected rights. Section 101 protects union members’ right to sue. However, the defendants argued that the state-court lawsuit was “self-serving” and anti-democratic in nature and was thus unprotected by the LMRDA’s right-to-sue provision. The court was not moved.

The LMRDA is not limited to particular types of lawsuits, nor even to meritorious ones, explained the court. Even if the defendants were correct that the state-court lawsuit was nothing more than a bad-faith attempt to force the union into submission on particular political issues, the court could not endorse that view on a motion to dismiss without drawing a host of impermissible inferences in the defendants’ favor. Thus, the court declined to hold that the attorneys’ claims were so frivolous as a matter of law that they fell entirely beyond the scope of the LMRDA’s protections. Accordingly, they had stated claims under Section 101(a)(4).

Freedom of speech. Regarding the attorneys’ allegations that the charges interfered with their protected freedom of expression under Section 101(a)(2), the defendants responded that the lawsuits were categorically not protected expression under the LMRDA. The court was again unmoved, noting that even if the act of filing a lawsuit itself is not protected by Section 101(a)(2), the disciplinary charges here also targeted the attorneys’ speech contained in their lawsuit and the ideas they had sought to communicate.

“Whatever its ultimate merits,” continued the court, the attorneys’ “state-court lawsuit was not manifestly frivolous, was not defamatory, and sought redress for more than just purely private concerns.”

The LMRDA creates a statutory scheme that protects the rights of union members to disagree with one another, sometimes through the vehicle of litigation, explained the court. Further, while a union and its officers may be liable for wielding the coercive power of the union to suppress speech, union members are not liable to one another for such disagreements. That principle explains why the charging defendants are not liable under the LMRDA and why the attorneys violated no duty to the ALAA by filing their state-court lawsuit, concluded the court. As such, the attorneys also stated claims under Section 101(a)(2) of the LMRDA.

The case is No. 24-CV-5158 (JPO).

Judge: Oetken, J.P.

Attorneys: Cheryl L. Berger (Lieb at Law) for Ilana Kopmar. Jessica Isa Apter (Levy Ratner) for The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, Amalgamated Local Union 2325 of the International Union, United Automobile Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America [UAW], AFL-CIO.

Companies: The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, Amalgamated Local Union 2325 of the International Union, United Automobile Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), AFL-CIO

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