Two Courageous Teachers File a Lawsuit Against Sean Spiller and the NJEA for Misusing $45 Million of Teachers’ Dues and Hiding the Truth from Teachers

Don’t mess with New Jersey teachers — even if you are the NJEA. Two courageous teachers — Dr. Marie Dupont of Roselle and Ann Marie Pocklembo of Hamilton — are suing the NJEA and its former-President Sean Spiller for using $45 million of teachers’ dues to fund Spiller’s vanity run for governor and hiding the truth from teachers.  In the wake of Spiller’s failed run, NJEA leadership has been entirely unresponsive to any concerns expressed by teachers, and this lawsuit is the result.  Thanks to these two brave educators, there may finally be some accountability for the egregious misuse of teachers dues. Think-tank New Jersey Policy Center has also filed complaints with the IRS and New Jersey’s Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) about the NJEA’s violations of IRS and ELEC rules. Hopefully, the unresponsive and opaque NJEA leadership will be forced to account for its actions to the very teachers whose dues paid for it all, and to provide assurances that it won’t happen again.

Dr. Dupont speaks up and suffers retaliation. Dr. Dupont’s case exemplifies how out of touch NJEA leadership has become with the issues that concern teachers on a day-to-day basis.  Back in May — at the very end of Spiller’s failed primary run — she wrote an open letter to Spiller asking why NJEA leadership was spending $45 million of teachers’ dues on his run while Roselle teachers had worked without a contract for the entire school year and questioning NJEA leadership’s priorities.  Neither Spiller nor the NJEA deigned to respond to Dr. Dupont. What they did do — as Dr. Dupont claims — was retaliate against her by humiliating her publicly at a NJEA summer conference.  At no time did anyone in NJEA leadership try to address Dr. Dupont’s legitimate concerns about how well teachers were being represented by their union. At no time did they come clean about what they were doing with $45 million of dues.  And so Dr. Dupont filed a lawsuit.

NJEA leadership is unresponsive and dismissive. As they have been all along, NJEA leadership was completely dismissive of the lawsuit and the legitimate concerns it raised. NJEA spokesperson Steve Baker stated: “This lawsuit is baseless and without merit.” Baker claimed that the decision about what resources to devote to Spiller’s run was “made by our elected bodies.” But NJEA leadership has never come clean about how those decisions were actually made. Spiller told the Star-Ledger that the NJEA’s Super PAC, Garden State Forward, which was the conduit for the $45 million of dues to back Spiller, was run by three NJEA execs, including himself. We are left the guess at the role of the “elected bodies” that Baker mentions.  And whatever happened behind the scenes at NJEA headquarters, these momentous decisions were never communicated directly to teachers, as Sunlight has thoroughly documented.  As a result, even now Sunlight’s Facebook page has been inundated with (deceived) teachers and even a local president telling us that teachers’ dues are not spent on politics. Hopefully, the lawsuit will force NJEA leadership to come clean about what actually happened and assure members it won’t happen again.

Main claims of the lawsuit:

1. The NJEA violated its contractual duty to teachers by using their dues for political purposes. The NJEA offers teachers the opportunity to make voluntary contributions to the NJEA’s PAC, NJEA PAC, and both Dupont and Pocklembo declined to do so. They paid their dues in exchange for goods and services from the NJEA, not political spending.
2. The NJEA communicated to teachers that their dues would not be spent on politics. Had the plaintiffs known that their dues were being spent on politics, they would have ceased paying them (as Dr. Dupont ultimately did). The NJEA also concealed the existence of the dues-funded Super PAC Garden State Forward from teachers, thereby breaching its duty to inform members about how their dues were spent.
3. Spiller breached his fiduciary duty as president to put members’ interests ahead of his own.  Spiller was not only president of the NJEA but also chairman of the Super PAC Protecting Our Democracy, which received $5 million of dues from Garden State Forward. He also played an undetermined role in running Garden State Forward while $45 million of dues were being funneled to his run. This sort of self-dealing violated the NJEA’s own Conflict of Interest policy, which prohibits even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

IRS complaint. The IRS complaint alleges that the NJEA filed to properly disclose to the IRS that the $114 million that has flowed to Garden State Forward since 2013 was political spending. Instead they were characterized as charitable grants.  This concealed the truth from the public and teachers.

ELEC complaint. The ELEC complaint alleges that via Protecting Our Democracy, teachers’ dues were illegally contributed directly to Spiller’s campaign, and in combination with a legal contribution from NJEA PAC, the NJEA exceeded the limitation on direct contributions to campaigns.

We think it is important to point out that Dr. Dupont made very clear in a press conference that she was undertaking the lawsuit for the benefit of all teachers.  We commend her — and Ms. Pocklembo — for her courage and resolution. She didn’t have to do this. Her life would probably be easier if she didn’t. But she did do it and we hope that the lawsuit will vindicate the interests of all New Jersey teachers.