211640P.pdf   07/25/2022  Eric Brown  v.  AFSCME
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  21-1640
                          and No:  21-1684
   U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota   
   [PUBLISHED] [Colloton, Author, with Loken and Shepherd, Circuit Judges] 
   Civil case - Civil rights. In these cases, current and former Minnesota 
   state employees sought damages under Section 1983 for money deducted from 
   their paychecks by unions that represented their local bargaining unit. 
   The district court held that the unions were entitled to a defense against 
   liability under Section 1983 because they acted in good-faith reliance on 
   state statutes and existing judicial precedent. For a similar case, see 
   today's decision in Hoekman v. Education Minnesota, No. 21-1366. A 
   plaintiff who sues a private-party defendant based on the defendant's 
   employment of a state law that has been declared unconstitutional must 
   show that the defendant was not acting in good-faith reliance on that law; 
   here, the plaintiffs do not allege that that the unions subjectively 
   believed they were violating the rights of employees by collecting the 
   fees, so the court need not address whether such a showing would overcome 
   the unions' objectively reasonable reliance on the statute in question; 
   because the unions collected the fair share fees under Minn. Stat. Sec. 
   179A.06 at a time when the procedure used had been deemed constitutional 
   by the Supreme Court, their reliance on the statute was objectively 
   reasonable, and they were entitled to a good-faith defense.