Object Lesson

For 15 years, Dennis Robey was a card- carrying member of the Ohio Education Association. Then in 1994, the high school industrial arts teacher in Huber Heights, Ohio, noticed a small publication stuck in his school mailbox. The National Education Association pamphlet enumerated various issues that the union supported, including gay rights, abortion, and student access to birth control.

Robey, who gives 10 percent of his income to Christian groups and causes, was stunned. "I was really torn," he recalls. "Here I am giving money to organizations to help fight these things, and my union is supporting them. Religiously, morally, I could not see doing that."

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, workers with genuine religious objections to financially supporting their union have the right to resign and divert their dues to a mutually agreed-upon charity. (Teachers who object to having their dues used for political and other non-bargaining activities for nonreligious reasons may also resign their union membership, but they must pay their share of collective bargaining costs, typically called an "agency fee.") So Robey wrote a letter to the OEA asking for religious accommodation. "I got absolutely no...