Chicago City Wire

The transfer of Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) funds towards political efforts to elect Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson in 2023 is at the heart of a recent lawsuit brought by union member Philip Weiss and three other CTU members.

Weiss, a Chicago Public Schools social worker who was on the CTU’s Finance Committee and oversaw the union’s $13 billion pension fund, said the transfer of union money in 2023 solely for election purposes and the CTU’s subsequent refusal to provide audit records to its more than 25,000 members underscores the lawsuit. 

He said CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, who is named as a defendant in the case along with CTU Financial Secretary Maria Moreno, made a unilateral decision to move the funds in the waning days of the 2023 Chicago mayoral election. 

“Stacy moved money in the middle of the night before the House of Delegates meeting to give it to Brandon Johnson,” Weiss told Chicago City Wire. “So she was supposed to come and tell us." 

However, Weiss said Davis Gates instead went around the CTU's governing body.

"She did it before we met," he said. "And we're like, what is going on here? This is not her piggy bank.” 

According to Illinois Policy, as of March 2023 the CTU had contributed nearly $5 million to Brandon Johnson's mayoral campaign, despite member criticism and an alleged violation of its own rules prohibiting the use of dues for political purposes. 

At the time CTU had funded approximately 65% of Johnson's campaign budget, which sparked concerns about transparency and potential conflicts of interest. 

Johnson, a former social studies teacher and CTU organizer, was serving as a lobbyist for the CTU in addition to his role as a Cook County Commissioner at the time of the election. 

Weiss highlighted the distinction between two critical funding sources: the political action committee (PAC) funds and the dues collected from union members. 

“Our bigger issue with the fact that they moved a couple million over to Johnson is that money was for the PAC,” he said. “There’s two separate buckets—there’s the PAC money and then there’s our dues money. That’s church and state. One is political money, one is for members’ defense, and she just seemed to have breached that wall.”

Having previously overseen the pension plan as the investment chair, Weiss is no stranger to the complexities of financial governance. 

“I was insistent at that point about seeing what our audits are since they are required to be shown to the membership and they’re required to be published, and they wouldn’t show them,” he said.

Weiss and his co-plaintiffs filed the lawsuit after the CTU allegedly failed to produce public audits over a year and a half later.

Weiss’s attorney in the case, Dean McGee, said the CTU is required to produce regular audits to be shared with union members but has failed to do so over the past several years. 

The Liberty Justice Center, where McGee serves as Educational Freedom Attorney, is a nonprofit litigation firm which represents clients like Weiss at no cost. 

“Once a year they're supposed to publish the audits directly to their members,” McGee told Chicago City Wire. “The last time CTU published a financial audit to its members was September 2020, when it released an audit covering 2018 and the first half of 2019. So since July of 2019, union members have not received the financial audits that they're entitled to. And that's really the factual basis and the legal basis for the suit.” 

Prior to the lawsuit Weiss said he reached out to the CTU over 14 times and had yet to receive the audits. 

The Liberty Justice Center posted some of those attempts on its X account. 

The lawsuit aims to compel the CTU to release the missing audits and allow for a forensic audit to trace the allocation of funds over recent years. 

“The purpose of this lawsuit is to get a copy of [the audits] and then I want to have a forensic audit done and figure out where all our money has gone in the last few years,” Weiss said.

Weiss has been a CTU member since 1998. His wife is a teacher and fellow CTU member and his parents were also educators who belonged to the CTU. 

“We have about 100 years of service in CPS,” Weiss said. 

Following the lawsuit, Weiss said he has suffered intimidation from CTU’s leadership, especially during recent House of Delegates meetings. 

In response to the filing, CTU’s attorney Robert Bloch sent a letter to the Liberty Justice Center calling the lawsuit “harassing and frivolous” and not the “CTU will seek appropriate sanctions from the Court.” 

Weis said that letter was used against him during an Oct. 8 CTU House of Delegates election. 

“I was one of the candidates [for reelection], and (Davis Gates’) whole goal was to ambush me and to use this demand letter as a way of saying, ‘here is the enemy of the union,’” he claimed. “I’m just trying to present who I am to the delegates. She’s meanwhile trying to destroy me. That’s not a union; that’s anti-union behavior.”

Weiss said Davis Gates has mischaracterized him as a conservative and the lawsuit as a part of "Project 2025," a popular boogeyman for Democrats in the 20204 election cycle.  

“Stacey has put out information with me, with Trump and (former Illinois Governor Bruce) Rauner, and I'm a registered Democrat,” he said. “I even put my ballot online that shows that I'm a Democrat. And she still says I'm a right wing, whatever, MAGA Republican. That's how she describes me. I'm a registered Democrat.”

McGee called the backlash from CTU leadership "absurd.” 

"It is a clear pattern of intimidation, tactics against us and worse against their own members,” McGee said. 

Chris Burger, a spokesman for the Liberty Justice Center, deemed the political attacks by CTU’s leadership a distraction meant to draw eyes away from Weiss's financial inquiry. 

“This isn't political, this is about transparency and providing the audits as required and this kind of shows that they want to distract from the issue at hand, which is furnishing the audits every year,” Burger told Chicago City Wire. 

“The last one they did was in the middle of 2019. And so you spread falsehoods and attack your enemy when you're losing. So it seems like an act of desperation. All they have to do is furnish the audits like they are legally required. Instead, they're demeaning and attacking the character of people and spreading falsehoods.” 

McGee said the actions by CTU are not going unnoticed. 

“We're also looking at all options,” he said. “We have to punish CTU for past or future retaliatory actions that they've taken against our clients.”

Weiss expressed his concerns about the current leadership. 

“There’s no confidence in the leadership of Stacy Davis Gates amongst my caucus at all. Nothing. Zero. She doesn’t represent [us] at all. She represents herself and her interests,” he said.

Despite the challenges and potential backlash, Weiss has received considerable support from fellow educators. 

“So far, I’ve only had support. People are very glad that we filed this lawsuit, and I was very worried about it and I’ve gotten a lot of support,” he said.

Chicago Magazine recently called Johnson “Mayor CTU,” noting he has maintained his “radical” perspective and has transformed the role of the mayor to align with the CTU. 

The Johnson administration has been marked by close collaboration with the CTU, which has exerted significant influence over school board appointments and policy decisions. 

Critics have voiced concerns that Johnson’s approach may alienate voters concerned about the concentration of power within the CTU.

According to the National Review, Johnson has prioritized the union's demands, including a controversial plan to transfer $150 million in pension debt obligations to the already financially strained Chicago Public Schools (CPS). 

Following resistance from CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to a $300 million high-interest loan sought by the union and Johnson, the entire Board of Education, appointed by Johnson, resigned en masse. 

As Johnson replaces them with allies likely to support the union's agenda, critics warn that this will lead to further financial strain on the city while educational outcomes continue to decline.