State loses again on former AG Clarkson's anti-union crusade
William Consovoy, the Virginia lawyer who claimed President Trump could kill someone and not face prosecution as long as he remained in office, has collected nearly $600,000 from the Dunleavy administration to pursue the failed anti-union crusade, now under its third attorney general.
He just lost another round in court, at state expense, extending the losing legacy of Kevin Clarkson on cases ranging from school funding to the Dunleavy recall.
About $100,000 of Dunleavy’s allocation for Trump’s lawyer remains and all of that will be gone before long.
On Monday, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Gregory Miller ruled against the state and rejected Clarkson’s bogus claim—that the First Amendment rights of workers had been violated by voluntarily paying union dues. Clarkson and Dunleavy wanted to make it harder for unions to collect dues, which would weaken them.
Miller said the “stipulated, undisputed facts” show that the state breached its contract with the Alaska State Employees Association, breached the “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing,” violated the separation of powers in the Alaska Constitution and violated the Administrative Procedures Act under the Clarkson plan.
“ASEA is entitled to a declaratory judgment that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not require the state to alter the union dues deduction practices in place prior to Aug. 27, 2019 and does not require the steps set forth in Attorney General Clarkson’s Aug. 27, 2019 legal opinion,” Miller wrote.
Miller ordered that the state pay $186,020 in damages to the union and issued a permanent injunction.
The crusade should have ended when Clarkson texted himself out of a job, but Sniffen picked up the cause and kept paying Trump’s lawyer $600 an hour to fight Alaska unions.
Dunleavy appointed Sniffen on Jan. 18 as AG after nearly five months as acting AG. “In the past two years I have worked alongside Ed and know he will serve my administration and the people of Alaska with distinction,” Dunleavy said.
Sniffen stopped serving within two weeks after sexual misconduct allegations surfaced about his behavior in the early 1990s when he was an adult attorney supervising high school students.
Tregarrick Taylor, Alaska’s third attorney general since last summer, should end the anti-union crusade and admit that it is not based on a solid legal argument and it will cost the state a great deal more money to get the claim to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was Clarkson’s vision.
But Taylor wrote legal documents for Clarkson’s crusade, so perhaps he believes that voluntarily paying union dues violates the First Amendment.
This started when Clarkson gave Trump’s personal lawyer a no-bid $50,000 contract in August 2019 at the “Alaska discounted rate” of $600 an hour for the anti-union campaign.
He later doubled the Consovoy contract to $100,000, but that wasn’t nearly enough. The Dunleavy administration agreed to spend up to $600,000 more on Consovoy more than a year ago.
The Legislature tried to stop the work with Consovoy and get state lawyers already on the payroll, who could lose the case at a much lower price. But Clarkson and Sniffen refused to follow the budget directions.
There was never any need to pay someone back East $600 an hour to write windy documents claiming Kevin Clarkson was a brilliant legal strategist.
Dunleavy is now seeking $4 million to spend on lawyers for “statehood defense,” an ambiguous term that could include giving more cash to Consovoy for this case and others.
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