Ariadna Ramon Baro v. Lake County Federation of Teachers Local 504, Ift-Aft/afl-Cio

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-1722
A RIADNA R AMON BARO ,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
LAKE C OUNTY F EDERATION OF
TEACHERS LOCAL 504,
IFT-AFT/AFL-CIO and
WAUKEGAN C OMMUNITY
SCHOOL DISTRICT N O. 60,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:20-cv-02126 — John F. Kness, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED DECEMBER 6, 2022 — DECIDED J ANUARY 6, 2023
____________________
Before R OVNER , HAMILTON , and S T. EVE, Circuit Judges.
ST. EVE, Circuit Judge. Ariadna Ramon Baro was an Eng-
lish-as-a-second-language teacher for Defendant Waukegan
Community School District No. 60 (“the District”) in August
2019 when she signed a union membership form—a contract

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2 No. 22-1722
to join Defendant Lake County Federation of Teachers Local
504, IFT-AFT/AFL-CIO (“the Union”), the union that repre-
sents teachers in the District. This form authorized the District
to deduct union dues from her paychecks for one year. Ramon
Baro alleges she learned later that she was not required to join
the Union and she tried to back out of the agreement. But the
Union insisted that her contract was valid and the District
continued deducting dues from her paychecks. In response,
Ramon Baro filed this lawsuit, arguing that the dues deduc-
tion violated her First Amendment rights under Janus v. Amer-
ican Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees, Council
31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018). The district court dismissed the suit.
Because Ramon Baro voluntarily consented to the withdrawal
of union dues and the enforcement of a valid private contract
does not implicate her First Amendment rights, we now af-
firm.
I. Background
A. Factual Allegations1
Ramon Baro worked as an English-as-a-second-language
teacher in the District during the 2019–2020 school year. As
part of orientation, she attended a presentation by the Union.
A representative explained how much dues would be and
gave each teacher a Union Membership Application. Alt-
hough the Union’s representative did not claim that member-
ship was required—and no one from the district made any
representations about union membership—Ramon Baro
1 Because the district court dismissed this complaint at the pleading stage,
the following allegations are taken from Ramon Baro’s complaint and as-
sumed true. Proft v. Raoul, 944 F.3d 686, 690 (7th Cir. 2019).

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No. 22-1722 3
assumed it was mandatory and signed the application. It
read, in relevant part:
I hereby apply to be a member of the Lake County Feder-
ation of Teachers, AFT Local 504 and authorize the Lake
County Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 504 to act as my
exclusive representation with my employer[.]
…
I authorize you to deduct from my earnings on a regular
pro rata basis, and time frame as set forth in my collective
bargaining agreement, the following:
1. An amount equal to the current annual member-
ship dues … . This voluntary authorization and as-
signment shall be irrevocable, regardless of
whether I am or remain a member of the Union, for
a period of one year from the date of authorization
and shall automatically renew from year to year un-
less I revoke this authorization by completing a rev-
ocation form between August 1 and August 31.
2. … This authorization is signed freely and voluntar-
ily and not out of any fear of reprisal; I will not be
favored or disadvantaged because I exercise this
right. This authorization shall continue in effect
from year to year unless terminated by me by writ-
ten notification … .
A few days after she signed the contract, Ramon Baro learned
that union membership was, in fact, optional. She sent letters
to the District and the Union, trying to revoke her member-
ship.

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4 No. 22-1722
Nevertheless, the District began deducting dues from Ra-
mon Baro’s paychecks in January 2020. The following month,
Ramon Baro contacted her union representative and reiter-
ated that she wanted to revoke her membership in the Union
and stop paying dues. In response, the President of the Union
informed her that she would have to wait until August to re-
sign, per the membership agreement.
Ramon Baro then filed this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983,
alleging that the continued deduction of dues violated her
First Amendment rights under Janus, 138 S. Ct. at 2486, and
seeking a refund for the dues she had paid. The President of
the Union sent her a letter just a few days later, confirming
that she was no longer a member of the Union and that dues
would stop being withheld from her paycheck. He enclosed a
check for $829.30, which he said included “a full refund of all
[Ramon Baro’s] dues plus an additional five hundred dollars
for [her] efforts in pursuing this matter.” The District stopped
withholding her dues the same day. But two days later, Ra-
mon Baro returned the check and moved forward with this
lawsuit.
B. Procedural History
At the district court, the District and the Union moved to
dismiss the complaint under Rule 12(b)(6). The court granted
the motion, explaining that Ramon Baro’s “voluntary choice
to join her school’s local union—even if ill-informed—means
that [she] is bound by the terms of the union membership
agreement and thus cannot show that the deduction of dues
from her paycheck violated the First Amendment.” She
timely filed this appeal.

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No. 22-1722 5
II. Analysis
“We review a dismissal order under Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 12(b)(6) de novo.” Proft, 944 F.3d at 690. We find,
as the district court held, that neither the First Amendment
nor ordinary contract principles entitle Ramon Baro to relief.
A. Janus Does Not Apply to Union Members
Ramon Baro insists that when the District withheld union
dues from her paychecks, it violated her First Amendment
rights under Janus. In Janus, the Supreme Court considered
the constitutionality of statutory “agency-fee” schemes for
public sector unions. Under these agency-fee arrangements,
“[e]mployees who decline[d] to join the union [we]re not as-
sessed full union dues but [were required] instead [to] pay
what [wa]s generally called an ‘agency fee,’ which
amount[ed] to a percentage of the union dues.” Janus, 138 S.
Ct. at 2460. This left government employees with no option
but to subsidize a union in some way. Compelled union sub-
sidization, the Court held, violated nonmembers’ First
Amendment rights. Id. at 2486.
Ramon Baro’s claim that she has a right to rescind her un-
ion membership is based on a single paragraph in Janus:
Neither an agency fee nor any other payment to the union
may be deducted from a nonmember’s wages, nor may
any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, un-
less the employee affirmatively consents to pay. By agree-
ing to pay, nonmembers are waiving their First Amend-
ment rights, and such a waiver cannot be presumed. Ra-
ther, to be effective, the waiver must be freely given and
shown by ‘clear and compelling’ evidence.

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6 No. 22-1722
Id. (cleaned up). She reads this passage as creating a right for
any government employee who, like her, “agree[s] to pay” a
union. Because “waiver cannot be presumed,” Ramon Baro
contends that once a nonmember signs a membership agree-
ment and agrees to pay union dues, a secondary waiver anal-
ysis is triggered, requiring a court to look beyond the mem-
bership agreement for further “clear and compelling evi-
dence” that the employee consented to pay the union.
We rejected this reading of Janus in Bennett v. Council 31 of
the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees,
AFL-CIO, 991 F.3d 724, 731 (7th Cir. 2021). The plaintiff in Ben-
nett was a union employee who had signed her union mem-
bership contract before Janus was decided and believed the
holding in Janus permitted her to void the contract. We ruled
that Janus’s reasoning was limited to nonmembers who were
being forced to subsidize union speech with which they had
chosen not to associate. Id. (citing Belgau v. Inslee, 975 F.3d 940,
950 (9th Cir. 2020), cert. denied, 141 S. Ct. 2795 (2021) and
Fischer v. Governor of New Jersey, 842 F. App'x 741, 752 (3d Cir.
2021), cert. denied sub nom. Fischer v. Murphy, 142 S. Ct. 426
(2021)). By contrast, “Janus said nothing about union mem-
bers who, like Bennett, freely chose to join a union and volun-
tarily authorized the deduction of union dues, and who thus
consented to subsidizing a union.” Id. at 732. All circuits to
consider the issue have agreed that Janus creates no new
waiver requirement before a valid union contract can be en-
forced. See Oliver v. Serv. Emps. Int'l Union Loc. 668, 830 F. Ap-
p'x 76, 79 (3d Cir. 2020); Hendrickson v. AFSCME Council 18,
992 F.3d 950, 962 (10th Cir. 2021), cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 423
(2021); Belgau, 975 F.3d at 951; Fischer, 842 F. App’x at 753. The
voluntary signing of a union membership contract is clear and

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No. 22-1722 7
compelling evidence that an employee has waived her right
not to join a union.
Attempting to distinguish her case from Bennett, Ramon
Baro points to the timing of her union membership. It is true
that Bennett joined her union before Janus was decided while
Ramon Baro joined the Union after Janus was decided. But the
timing makes no difference. What matters is the nature of
each person’s decision to sign a private contract. Like Bennett,
Ramon Baro voluntarily signed a valid contract, became a un-
ion member, and accepted the terms and conditions of union
membership. Accordingly, our holding in Bennett controls
and Janus—a case about the First Amendment rights of em-
ployees who choose not to join unions—does not apply to Ra-
mon Baro. Her § 1983 claim fails on these grounds alone.
B. Ordinary Contract Principles
Ramon Baro nevertheless argues that Bennett should not
control because she did not know that joining the Union was
optional, and so her decision to do so, unlike Bennett’s, was
not voluntary. But Ramon Baro’s union membership is estab-
lished by contract, and the First Amendment does not im-
munize agreements from ordinary contract law principles. See
Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663, 669 (1991) (“[G]ener-
ally applicable laws do not offend the First Amendment
simply because their enforcement … has incidental effects” on
free speech); Bennett, 991 F.3d at 731 (citing Belgau, 975 F.3d at
950). Indeed, every circuit court to consider the issue has held
the same. See Belgau, 975 F.3d at 951; Fischer, 842 F. App’x at
753; Hendrickson, 992 F.3d at 962; see also Hoekman v. Educ.
Minn., 41 F.4th 969, 978 (8th Cir. 2022).

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8 No. 22-1722
Applying ordinary Illinois contract principles, we see that
Ramon Baro’s voluntariness argument is untenable:
Illinois follows the objective theory of intent, whereby the
court looks first to the written agreement and not to the
parties’ subjective understandings. … The status of a doc-
ument as a contract depends on what the parties express
to each other and to the world, not on what they keep to
themselves.
Hampton v. Ford Motor Co., 561 F.3d 709, 714 (7th Cir. 2009)
(cleaned up); see also Lewitton v. ITA Software, Inc., 585 F.3d 377,
380 (7th Cir. 2009) (“Only if the ‘contract’s language is suscep-
tible to more than one interpretation’ would we look to extrin-
sic evidence to determine the parties’ intent.”) (quoting
Camico Mut. Ins. Co. v. Citizens Bank, 474 F.3d 989, 993 (7th Cir.
2007)). In this case, the objective intent of the parties was clear
from the face of the membership agreement. By the plain lan-
guage of the contract, the agreement was a “voluntary author-
ization and assignment,” intended to “be irrevocable, regard-
less of whether [Ramon Baro is] or remain[s] a member of the
Union, for a period of one year.” Ramon Baro’s signature on
the contract further attested that it was “signed freely and vol-
untarily.” Under Illinois contract law, such unambiguous lan-
guage means that our analysis does not consider the subjec-
tive understanding of the parties. In other words, Ramon
Baro’s belief that the contract was mandatory is irrelevant. See
Hendrickson, 992 F.3d at 962 (applying New Mexico contract
law); Fischer, 842 F. App’x at 752–53 (applying New Jersey
contract law).2
2 These same contract principles explain why Ramon Baro’s suggestion
that dismissing her claim would sanction coercion and fraud by unions is

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No. 22-1722 9
In sum, the First Amendment protects our right to speak.
It does not create an independent right to void obligations
when we are unhappy with what we have said. For the fore-
going reasons, the decision of the district court is
A FFIRMED.
unfounded. Fraud and coercion are common defenses which can void
contracts in the first place. See, e.g., Keystone Montessori Sch. v. Vill. of River
Forest, 187 N.E.3d 1167, 1178 (Ill. App. Ct. 2021), reh'g denied, (July 20,
2021), appeal denied, 183 N.E.3d 909 (Ill. 2021).

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