A Wisconsin law that gutted collective bargaining for teachers and other public employees in the state 13 years ago has been deemed unconstitutional by a state circuit court.
The law, passed in 2011, limited collective bargaining for most public employees in the state to pay raises capped at the rate of inflation, and required 51 percent of public workers represented by collective bargaining to vote to recertify their local unions every year. It also barred unions from collecting dues automatically through workers’ payroll deductions.
Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost ruled that the statutes, known as Act 10 and Act 55 for the legislation that created them, violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution because they carve out exemptions for some public safety employees, such as municipal police and firefighters. (Those exceptions were widely seen as a favor for constituencies that were more supportive of former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican.)
Act 10, a centerpiece of Walker’s first term, made Wisconsin a poster child for widespread Republican-led efforts over the last decade to restrict collective bargaining for teachers and other public-sector employees.
If the ruling is upheld, it could provide more wind in the sails of broader efforts to roll back laws restricting collective bargaining. The Wisconsin ruling comes less than a month after a federal judge ruled Florida’s SB 256, which also bans union payroll deductions and requires local union recertification, was unconstitutional.
The Wisconsin law had “stripped workers of the ability to speak up and be heard,” AFT Wisconsin President Kim Kohlhaas said in a statement.
In 2010, Wisconsin had higher rates of union membership and representation than the nation as a whole, but union membership has plummeted in the years since, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The data includes both private and public sector workers).
“I’m thrilled that this law has been ruled unconstitutional,” Kohlhaas said, “and if it is upheld in further court cases, employees will have the opportunity to create and join unions and advocate for what will help improve public education.”
Teachers’ unions are operating in a different political context today than in 2011
There’s still a long road to collective bargaining changes for teachers in Wisconsin. The ruling leaves open the possibility that the the state legislature could rewrite the law without exemptions for any employee groups. While the GOP still controls both houses of the Wisconsin legislature, it no longer has supermajorities, and Democrat Tony Evers is governor, which could provide a more union-friendly context for a new law.
While the judge agreed with the Abbotsford Education Association and other teachers’ and public employee unions that sued last year to overturn the law, similar arguments failed in earlier federal and state efforts to overturn it.
Supporters of Act 10 have called for the ruling to be appealed. Walker immediately took to the social media platform X to denounce the circuit court ruling, arguing that the law “allowed schools to staff based on merit and pay based on performance. ... Collective bargaining isn’t a right; it’s an expensive entitlement.”
The law’s effects were widespread. Turnover among the most experienced Wisconsin teachers doubled just after Act 10 passed, one study found, as more than a third of teachers over 55 retired to lock in health care and retirement benefits whose costs rose under the law. Later research, though, suggests that the law helped some districts begin more flexible teacher-pay arrangements and that those paid dividends for student achievement.
Nationwide, teachers in states that require collective bargaining earned roughly $20,000 more per year on average in 2023-24 than teachers earned in states that bar or just allow but don’t require unions, and they had larger pay raises from the prior year, according to the RAND Corp.'s annual Survey of the American Teacher.
Overturning Wisconsin’s bargaining restrictions is a “big deal,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. “There are many fights still to come, but this decision stands to make a huge difference for educators.”
But the landscape of teacher bargaining has also shifted markedly since 2011. The U.S. Supreme Court, in 2018, did away with “agency fees” collected from nonmembers who work under bargained contracts, further complicating membership. And more states are considering curbing how unions can collect dues.
Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, cautioned that the coming switch to the Trump administration and a fully GOP-controlled Congress may mean more federal efforts to curtail teachers’ unions in particular.
“Certainly there is just no question that we are facing an uphill battle” at the federal level, Pringle said.
