According to The Wall Street Journal, a new Oregon law called the “Workers Fraud Protection Act” takes effect on January 1, 2025, and is designed to target the Freedom Foundation, a think tank that informs public-sector workers of their rights. The law makes it unlawful to falsely impersonate a union representative, with a plaintiff able to collect statutory damages of $6,250 per incident. Unions allege the Freedom Foundation’s mailers, which use union colors and logos, mislead workers, though the group’s name and “Opt Out Today” slogan are visible. The mailers provide a ready-made form for workers to exercise their “Janus rights,” referencing the 2018 Supreme Court decision that lets public workers opt out of union fees, and claim potential savings of $700 a year in dues. The law enables unions to bring civil actions for damages, a move critics argue is intended to bury the Foundation in legal defense costs and silence its message.
The real target is information
Here’s the thing: this isn’t really about fraud. It’s about friction. The 2018 Janus ruling was a seismic shift, but its practical impact relies on workers actually knowing about the right and having a clear, simple path to exercise it. That’s what the Freedom Foundation’s mailers do. They lower the activation energy. And public-sector unions, often with help from allied state legislatures, have spent years building up that friction again—think short annual opt-out windows and bureaucratic hurdles.
So this Oregon law is the next logical, and aggressive, step. If you can’t stop the Supreme Court, you try to stop the messengers. The $6,250 fine per “incident”—which could be interpreted as per mailer sent—isn’t just a penalty; it’s a weapon of economic coercion. The goal is to make the cost of communication prohibitive. Even fighting the accusations in court would bleed a nonprofit dry. That’s the point.
A slippery slope for speech
But let’s look at the alleged “impersonation.” The mailers use similar colors and logos? Welcome to the world of advocacy and political communication. Basically, every piece of mail from a political action committee borrows visual cues to signal what it’s about. The key fact, which the Journal notes, is that the Freedom Foundation’s name is on there. This seems less like fraud and more like aggressive marketing that the unions really, really don’t like.
And that’s where the First Amendment problem screams. The state is creating a special legal category—”union representative”—and granting a private entity (the union) the power to sue critics for massive damages if their speech creates a “false impression.” That’s a dangerously broad and subjective standard. What’s next? Could a corporation sue a environmental group for using its brand’s color scheme in a critical report? The chilling effect is the whole idea.
The bigger political battle
This is a naked example of the collusion between public-sector unions and the state governments they help elect. The unions provide political manpower and funding; the lawmakers return the favor with protective legislation. It’s a closed loop. And the people outside that loop are the workers who might want to keep their dues money and the taxpayers funding the government agencies.
The Journal’s editorial board is right: this law deserves and will almost certainly get a fierce legal challenge. It frames a core political conflict—the power of public unions versus the rights of individual workers—as a free speech issue. That’s a powerful framing. The unions are betting they can shut down a nuisance. But they might have just given their opponents a perfect case to take back to the Supreme Court. I think they’ve overplayed their hand.
