Glenn E. Rothner

Rothner worked during his law school summers as a law clerk for the United Farm Workers in Delano before forming a firm to represent labor unions, labor-management trust funds and employees with wage and hour and civil rights claims.

“At first I didn’t think labor law would be a career, but after two weeks on that job I realized I’d found my goal,” he said. “I went straight back to Delano after I passed the bar exam to work as staff counsel.” He opened his law office doors on April Fools’ Day 1978. “We modestly thought it would be an auspicious day,” he laughed.

He’s currently kept busy serving as general counsel for Service Employees International Union Local 2015, a statewide union representing 400,000 home care and nursing home employees; for the California Federation of Teachers, the state branch of the national union representing educators in public school districts, community college districts, private schools and the University of California; and SEIU Local 721, the Southern California union representing approximately 100,000 county, city and special district employees plus employees of nonprofits.

“We are putting particular emphasis on helping public sector unions refine their dues and membership practices in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus decision in 2018,” he said.

The high court held in Janus v. AFSCME that under the First Amendment non-union government employees cannot be required to pay fees to labor unions. “The good news was that we saw it coming and were able in advance to advise our union clients how to build in compliance,” Rothner said. “Unions have done tremendous work in signing up workers, so they did not suffer the setbacks their foes on the far right expected.”

Janus led to a California case brought against the California Teachers Association by plaintiffs who contended they had revoked their union membership and disavowed their obligation to pay dues following the Supreme Court’s decision. Mendez v. CTA, 3:19-cv-01290 (N.D. Cal., filed March 11, 2019).

The defense obtained dismissal following a bench trial on the grounds that the plaintiffs’ union membership was a matter of contract, not of state law, and so there was no state action on which to base a constitutional claim. Rothner said he represented only one group of defendants, but was pleased with the result.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of Oakland came just as the Biden administration took office, ushering in a pro-union landscape.

“We now have two former union lawyers at the National Labor Relations Board—one as general counsel, one with a board seat—and we also have a former partner here at the firm [Emma Leheny] serving at the Department of Education,” Rothner said.

He filed an amicus brief on behalf of five U.S. senators in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, a U.S. Supreme Court case argued March 22 over the right of union organizers to access farmworkers in the fields.

“The Pacific Legal Foundation argued that entry onto the dirt was a taking,” Rothner said. “I was stunned, and I may have been the only lawyer in the case who has been out in the fields with the workers.”

— John Roemer