OEA v OTU goes before Oregon Supreme Court

Another for the "if it matters to Oregonians" file

On Sept. 10th, the Oregon Supreme Court will hear the appeal of the Oregon Education Association v. Oregon Taxpayers United RICO lawsuit dating back to 2000. Two Oregon teachers unions, including the OEA and AFT of Oregon/AFL-CIO, sued Bill Sizemore’s organizations to get back three times the money they spent successfully campaigning against two measures relating to how unions raise and spend political money.

The Multnomah County judge who presided over the case for three years, Judge Jerome LaBarre, resigned from the case after confessing that his son was a member of the OEA, the plaintiff in the case. In fact, his son was elected president of the OEA Woodburn local.

If you never heard about Judge LaBarre’s conflict of interest in the case, there is a reason for that. Oregonian reporter, Dave Hogan, decided that the judge’s conflict of interest and resignation from the case, which was an embarrassment for the entire Oregon judiciary, was not newsworthy.

The OTU appeal before the Oregon Supreme Court is based on its claim that there never was a legal basis for a racketeering lawsuit. Bill Sizemore, the head of OTU, told NWR that they decided not to appeal all of the biased evidentiary rulings Judge LaBarre made leading up to, during, and after the trial, because all that would get OTU was a new trial in Multnomah County in front of 15 new Democrats. (It’s not that Democrat jurors cannot be fair, but the first thing the union lawyers did in the original case was dismiss all of the Republicans from the jury pool, which was another aspect of the trial that Dave Hogan found not newsworthy.)

The current appeal focuses primarily on whether the OTU Education Foundation, a nonprofit, spent more than was allowed on ballot measure campaigns and if that happened whether that event formed a legal basis for a political opponent to sue to get its campaign funds back tripled.

Sizemore told NWR that the OTU foundation was careful to stay within the 20 percent limit, which the IRS sets for nonprofits, but that the IRS code provides that a nonprofit will not lose its exempt status for exceeding the limit, unless it exceeds in by more than 50 percent over a four year average, something the unions never even tried to prove.

Sizemore says he expects to prevail before the Oregon Supreme Court, but will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of OTU loses this appeal. He said it is unheard of in American courts for a political entity to be allowed to sue its opponent for all of its campaign money back, tripled no less, because the other side’s tax returns allegedly were inaccurate. Sizemore said the case should never have gone to trial and wouldn’t have with an honest, competent judge.

OEA spokesmen have been wondering out loud lately whether suing Sizemore (reportedly a Tim Nesbitt strategy) was the right thing to do. Judging by the package of measures Sizemore is qualifying for the 2008 ballot, the OEA and the American Federation of Teachers/AFL-CIO shouldn’t go around suing their political opponents.