A Rutgers University student filed a class action lawsuit Friday against unionized professors who went on strike last spring, alleging the “unions were aware that strikes would cancel classes, causing students to miss out on the education they had paid for.”
The suit, which was filed Friday in Middlesex County Superior Court, seeks to have the strike declared illegal and class status certified for 67,000 students who “were denied a week of education.”
The suit seeks actual and punitive damages — tripled under the Consumer Fraud Act — for lost tuition incurred by students because of the strike, plus attorneys’ fees.
The plaintiff is Rutgers junior and conservative activist Jeremy Li, a business major who commutes to the state university’s New Brunswick campus from his home in Bridgewater, according to the university and his Facebook page. Li was a member of the Rutgers Student Senate in 2022-23, according to the university.
The defendants named in the suit are several unions representing Rutgers professors and support workers, including the Rutgers Council of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers, or AAUP-AFT. Rutgers University is not a defendant.
Li is represented by Daniel R. Suhr, a Wisconsin-based lawyer who has been affiliated with the Federalist Society, the Liberty Justice Center and other libertarian and conservative groups. In New Jersey, he is represented by New Jersey lawyer Mark R. Scirocco of Morristown.
Li and his lawyers did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday. Alan Maass, a spokesman for the AAUP-AFT’s Rutgers Council, said Sunday the union hadn’t been formally notified of the suit and he declined to comment.
In the first faculty strike in Rutgers’ 257-year history, professors, adjuncts and others belonging to unions representing 9,000 workers walked out of their classrooms and onto picket lines on the New Brunswick, Newark and Camden campuses last April.
The five-day strike for better wages, working conditions and facilities led to new contracts that will cost Rutgers nearly $184 million over four years.
The lawsuit alleges the strike was illegal, which is similar to the position Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway initially took when he threatened to go to court to seek an injunction to force the strikers back to work.
Not all students were angered by the strike. Many joined the picket lines in April in solidarity with their professors.
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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com
