In Today’s News and Commentary, President Trump nominates a replacement Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, the Eighth Circuit rules municipal taxpayers can sue a teacher union over a collective bargaining leave rule, and a class action alleging H-2A sheepherder wage-fixing survives a motion to dismiss.

            President Trump took to Truth Social yesterday and announced he was nominating Dr. E.J. Antoni as the new commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Dr. Antoni is a Project 2025 contributor and favored by Steve Bannon for the role. As Justin noted, Trump fired the previous commissioner, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, who was confirmed by the Senate in January 2024, hours after the August jobs report revealed the largest downward adjustment of jobs since the pandemic. Dr. Antoni has never held a position in the federal government, though he earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Northern Illinois University in 2020. Since then, he has worked at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, and the Heritage Foundation, where he currently serves as the Chief Economist. Though President Trump took umbrage with the August 1^st jobs report, revisions are expected and necessary, and the numbers are finalized before they get to the BLS commissioner. Even so, Dr. Antoni recently commented on Bannon’s podcast that “part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems” is that the BLS was not led by a Trump appointee. Former Commissioner of the Council of Economic Advisor and Harvard Professor Jason Furman criticized Dr. Antoni as “an extreme partisan” without “any relevant experience” that represents “a break from decades of nonpartisan technocrats.”

            Also yesterday, the Eighth Circuit issued a decision downstream of Janus that allows Minnesota residents to move forward with their claims against a school district and Anoka Hennepin Education Minnesota (American Federation of Teachers Local 7007) over an allegedly unconstitutional provision in their collective bargaining agreement. Taxpayers are generally unable to satisfy standing requirements in a lawsuit intending to influence how Treasury funds are spent. However, municipal taxpayer standing is an exception to this rule, and in Huizenga v. Independent School District Number 11, residents that disagreed with teachers’ alleged political and campaign advocacy during paid leave work filed a 1983 suit alleging they were forced to subsidize this activity in violation of their First Amendment speech rights. Under the collective bargaining agreement, Independent School District No. 11 gave teachers collectively 100 days a year of paid leave to work for the union. The union argued that the plaintiffs didn’t show that their taxpayer dollars were uniquely implicated by the leave policy because the district intermingles federal, state, and local funds. Even though one plaintiff was unable to satisfy standing requirements because she no longer resided in the school district, the other two did because they (1) live in the district, (2) pay taxes there, and (3) the district pays substitutes while teachers take paid union leave to engage in political and campaign advocacy. The court reasoned that plaintiffs have a “direct pecuniary injury” because their taxes “directly” support the activities complain of even though the union reimburses the cost of the substitutes. Because plaintiffs do not take issue with the hiring of substitutes, the dissenting judge reasoned that the municipal taxpayer argument should fail, as the allegedly illegal conduct is the renting out of teachers at a subsidized rate for union work, and taxpayer dollars are spent solely on hiring substitutes.

            Lastly, the United States District Court of the District of Nevada denied a motion to dismiss on Friday August 8^th in Ucharima Alvarado v. Western Range Association, et al., an antitrust, wage-fixing case involving migrant sheepherders on H-2A visas who earn $5.00/hour for round-the-clock, grueling labor. Initially filed in 2022, and subsequently amended twice, the lawsuit claims that member ranches of the Western Range Association (WRA) coordinate to suppress sheepherder wages and avoid competing for labor, creating conditions of indentured servitude and resulting in the illegal withholding of millions of dollars. Judge Miranda Du issued the opinion, concluding that the WRA and its members are not entitled to antitrust immunity under any of the following: the Copperweld Single Entity Doctrine, the express provisions of Section 6 of the Clayton Act, and implied immunity created by the H-2A regulatory protocols. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit dismissed an earlier version of this suit (Llacua v. Western Range Association) because the sheepherders had not sufficiently proven collusion, though antitrust experts have criticized the decision as wrongly decided.