The law firm that brought the landmark case Janus v. AFSCME before the U.S. Supreme Court last year sued Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday over an executive order he signed to block union foes from seeking the contact information of state employees. 

The Liberty Justice Center, which was on the winning side in Janus—in which the high court restricted the ability of public-sector unions to collect fees from all employees in workplaces it has organized and bargained for—is seeking to reverse a decision from the state to block its request under the Freedom of Information Law for the names and home ZIP codes of state government employees.

The firm was seeking that information earlier this year in an effort to contact state government employees and explain the decision in Janus. The Supreme Court held in the ruling last year that nonunion public sector employees can't be forced to contribute to their unions.

Brian Kelsey, a senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, likened Cuomo's executive order to an attack on the firm's First Amendment rights.

"The Governor issued his executive order in an attempt to block groups like the Liberty Justice Center from educating public employees about their constitutional rights," Kelsey said. "The Supreme Court was clear: Every American has the right to decide for himself which groups to support with his money."

Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, said in a statement Thursday that they were unbothered by the legal challenge and were confident in their chances in court. 

"I'm not surprised that right wing activists hostile to working men and women are looking to chip away at union protections any way that they can," Azzopardi said. "We're not afraid of them."

The Janus decision was considered a major blow to public unions, which can no longer require nonunion workers to pay so-called agency fees. Those fees were previously sought by unions to contribute to the services they provide to both union and nonunion workers.

Many union leaders feared the decision would lead to a drop in union membership, since nonunion employees would no longer have to contribute to the union, but would still receive the same benefits as their union colleagues. That hasn't been the case in New York.

When the Liberty Justice Center requested the personal information of certain state government employees earlier this year, it was seeking their names, zip codes, hire date, labor organization, bargaining unit and payroll deduction type.

The state responded to that request with most of that information, but said it couldn't disclose the zip codes of those employees based on state law and an executive order signed by Cuomo. That executive order effectively prohibited state entities from disclosing contact information for state employees to the public. 

On appeal of that decision, an attorney for the Liberty Justice Center wrote that Cuomo's executive order can not legally bar the state from disclosing the home zip codes of those employees.

"Specifically as to Executive Order 183, the Governor may not by executive order preempt the public's rights to public information granted by statute," wrote Daniel Suhr, an attorney with the Liberty Justice Center.

Suhr wrote that the information was available under the Freedom of Information Law, and argued that Cuomo's executive order couldn't legally supersede that statute. An appeals officer from the state rejected that argument in a follow-up message to Suhr.

In the new lawsuit, filed in Albany County Supreme Court, the Liberty Justice Center made the same argument, saying that the state is bound by FOIL to release the requested zip codes to the public, regardless of Cuomo's executive order.

"When there is a conflict between a statute and an executive order, the order must give away and the statute must prevail," the lawsuit said. "A governor simply cannot amend a statute by issuing an executive order that conflicts with its mandates; this is not a constitutional process of lawmaking."

The lawsuit also challenged an alternative excuse from the state for denying the Liberty Justice Center access to the zip codes.

In its denial of the firm's FOIL request, the state also cited a section of the state Public Officers Law, which precludes disclosure of information when it would jeopardize the privacy of a public employee. Giving the firm access to the zip codes would have done so, the state wrote.

"Release of such information would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy," the state wrote in its denial.

The Liberty Justice Center, in its lawsuit, disagreed with that argument. Because they would only have access to the zip codes of those employees, the firm argued, it wouldn't have the direct contact information of those workers. 

Plus, the lawsuit said, a person's zip code isn't necessarily private information in today's digital age.

"Given the ubiquity of address information, from phone books to the Internet, there is no reason to think that a person's zip code is especially secret or confidential information, or that its disclosure will lead to economic or personal hardship," the lawsuit said.

The Liberty Justice Center is asking the court, in its lawsuit, to rule that the state improperly applied the Public Officers Law in rejecting its request for the zip codes, and that Cuomo's executive order does not prevent that information from being disclosed.

A spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, one of the state's largest unions of government employees, called the lawsuit "ridiculous" when reached for comment Thursday, and said the lawsuit ignored major changes in the law this year.

Cuomo and lawmakers, in this year's state budget, codified his executive order and expanded the same protections to local public employees in New York, rather than just those who work for the state government. Mark Kotzin, the CSEA spokesman, said that makes the suit moot. 

"I don't know what they hope to gain by filing a ridiculous lawsuit against the governor's actions," Kotzin said. "We absolutely think the governor did the right thing."

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