For the second time this year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a “Freedom” Foundation case. This time, the judges denied a petition to hear Boardman v Inslee, a lawsuit aimed at attacking the privacy of in-home care providers in Washington State. Protection for those workers was enshrined into law by 71% of Washington voters who approved Initiative 1501 in 2016.
This week’s dismissal adds to the “Freedom” Foundation’s already lengthy string of legal failures. Earlier this year, The Supreme Court declined to hear Belgau v Inslee, another lawsuit where the extremist organization was defeated in the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Washington State Supreme Court threw out an additional anti-union case this past February and an Oregon appeals court recently dismissed one of their covid denialist lawsuits.
The so-called “Freedom” Foundation is a far-right organization that has spent more than $30 million trying and failing to destroy unions for nearly six years. Notably, the “Freedom” Foundation’s president once joked with donors that he doesn’t even care if they win many lawsuits. He described their legal strategy instead as wasting opponents’ money on attorneys’ fees. This strategy and these lawsuits are abusing our legal system, using plaintiffs as pawns in a failed mission to raise more money and build more political power for extremists.
The “Freedom” Foundation’s mission is to destroy labor unions in order to help right-wing politicians win office. Instead, working people’s strength and union popularity continues to surge locally and nationally. This latest rejection from SCOTUS is another example of their tying up enormous amounts of donors’ money into multi-year struggles, only to come up empty-handed.