* Cook County Record…

Parents do not have legal rights to sue teachers unions for calling illegal strikes, which allegedly lead to learning loss and other economic and societal harms, an Illinois state appeals court has ruled.

And the appeals court said the unions may also be allowed to turn around and demand payment from the parents who sued them for allegedly attempting to use the courts to punish unions for their “speech” publicly defending their allegedly illegal labor actions.

On July 8, a three-justice panel of the Illinois First District Appellate Court upheld a Cook County judge’s decision tossing a lawsuit brought against the Chicago Teachers Union by parents of Chicago schoolchildren over the CTU’s attempt to thwart Chicago Public Schools’ efforts to reopen schools following the Covid pandemic in late 2021 and early 2022.

The parents had filed that lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court in 2024, seeking up to $250 million from the union for allegedly causing learning loss, income loss and general headaches for CPS students and families when the union executed a labor action to protest CPS’ return to full-time, in-school learning.

The lawsuit accused the CTU, as well as former CTU President Jesse Sharkey, current CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, and the American Federation of Teachers, of allegedly conspiring to engage in the labor action, which the lawsuit called an illegal strike, because the CTU asserted CPS did not do enough to protect them from the spread of Covid during that time.

The plaintiffs have been represented in the action by attorneys Patrick Hughes and Daniel Suhr, of the firm of Hughes & Suhr LLC, of Chicago.

Patrick Hughes was the attorney in the Illinois Policy Institute’s attorney who handled the successful Janus v. AFSCME lawsuit, which gutted the rights of public employee unions.

Amy Kessem is one of the plaintiffs. She’s the former 41st Ward Republican Committeeperson who has been affiliated with numerous far-right groups.

The opinion is here.

* The bottom line is that Kessem and other plaintiffs might now be on the hook for the teachers’ union legal fees, possibly including the costs of appeal…

In their ruling, however, the justices said Kubasiak’s ruling contained one error. They said the judge improperly refused to hold a hearing on whether the American Federation of Teachers should have been allowed to potentially countersue the parents for suing them at all.

That claim rested on Illinois’ law forbidding so-called Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs. The AFT essentially asked the judge to determine if the parents’ lawsuit amounted to an illegal SLAPP action intended to punish the AFT for speaking out in support of the CTU’s demands to be allowed to continue to stay home and avoid teaching students in person until such time as the teachers’ union agreed the danger of Covid had sufficiently passed.

In their ruling, the appellate justices agreed Kubasiak should yet hold further proceedings on that question.

Should the AFT prevail, the parents and potentially their counsel could be forced to pay the unions’ legal fees in the case.

Oops.

* From the opinion…

Based on our interpretation of these statutory provisions, we conclude that when AFT filed its anti-SLAPP motion, the trial court was required to hold a hearing on the motion and render a decision thereon “within 90 days after notice of the motion is given to the respondent.” The trial court failed to do so. Therefore, we remand the anti-SLAPP motion to the trial court for a hearing and decision.

Oops.