Teachers’ Unions Sue To Block Tax Cut Referendum From Appearing on Ballot

The move comes as state test scores drop and unions shift their focus to politics

Massachusetts teachers’ unions are suing to block residents from being able to vote on a statewide tax cut, asking the state’s supreme court to keep it off the ballot in November.

Raise Up Massachusetts, a lobbying group backed by the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) and the state’s American Federation of Teachers branch, filed a lawsuit last week in which it claimed the ballot measure, which would reduce the state’s base income tax rate from 5 percent to 4 percent, is unconstitutional. The group argues in the suit that the language on the ballot “fails to inform petition signers and voters” that the tax cut would apply to capital gains in addition to wages and interest. The ballot measure is a response to a separate referendum—this one largely pushed by the unions—that raised the state’s income tax an additional 4 percent on those who earn more than $1 million per year.

The MTA, an affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA), has a long history of involving itself in politics. The organization has disclosed more than $25 million in political spending over the past decade, and 99 percent of its campaign spending has gone to Democrats. Annual dues for the organization total $553 per year for full-time educators, according to the MTA. In addition to using those dues to boost Democratic candidates, the MTA spends large sums on Democratic Party-affiliated groups like House Majority PAC, Senate Majority PAC, and Raise Up Massachusetts.

The unions’ intense focus on preventing the people of Massachusetts from voting on a tax cut comes as the groups face mounting criticism over declining test scores in the state. Last year, only 42 percent of students between third and eighth grades met state proficiency standards in math, English, and science under the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment system test. That number is down from 2019, when about half of all students met proficiency standards.

Other tests found significant disparities along racial and economic lines, with black eighth-graders scoring 37 percentage points below their white peers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, and “economically disadvantaged” students falling 39 percentage points behind those from higher-income families.

Test scores have similarly dropped across the country as teachers’ unions increasingly focus on political issues unrelated to education. As the Washington Free Beacon has reported, left-wing political groups have spent nearly a decade pursuing dominance over teachers’ unions, and in turn, the labor organizations have lurched leftward. Last summer, the NEA published a handbook that omitted Jews from a proposed Holocaust education curriculum but said Israel was founded through “forced, violent displacement and dispossession,” the Free Beacon reported. The NEA also voted to ban its members from using any materials from the Anti-Defamation League in the classroom, a move the ADL called an attempt to “push a radical, antisemitic agenda on students.” The MTA itself was the target of a civil rights complaint last August over promoting curricular resources that included an image of the Star of David made from dollar bills.

Taxpayers for an Affordable Massachusetts, the group supporting the ballot question, accused the union-backed campaign of “fear-monger[ing]” and said the tax cut would help address the “affordability crisis here in Massachusetts,” a spokesman for the group told WBUR.

“The facts are clear,” the spokesman continued. “This ballot question will put $1,300 (on average) back in the pockets of working families across the Commonwealth at a time when it is desperately needed.”