Attorneys review Chicago Teachers Union audits following congressional
request
[January 26, 2026]
By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – The Chicago Teachers Union says it has complied
with a U.S. House committee’s request to release financial audits, but
attorneys challenging the union in court say they are still reviewing
the documents.
On Oct. 8, 2024, the Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit in Cook
County circuit court on behalf of four CTU members after they said the
union failed to produce the audits for four years.
Last November, the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce sent
a letter to CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, asking the union to produce
audits from 2019 to 2024.
CTU said it received notice that the Department of Labor was launching a
compliance audit program on Jan. 16, the same day the union said it
complied with the House committee’s request.
Ángel Valencia, Senior Counsel for the Liberty Justice Center, said
attorneys are reviewing the audits for union members who asked for them.
“The information that the union has produced in the past has just been a
lot of very short, self-serving, self-drafted summaries of audits which
have not been sufficient,” Valencia told The Center Square.
Valencia said the lawsuit is independent of the attention CTU is drawing
from the House committee and the Department of Labor.
“We appreciate the interest that the House committee has shown for this
issue, but we in no way are associated with that,” Valencia said.
An update posted on the CTU website by union leadership said the audits
had already been made available.
“In fact, Liberty Justice plaintiff, Phil Weiss, has already come into
the office and reviewed the full audits himself. More detail on the
union’s finances is already available in federal findings,” the CTU
statement said.
Mailee Smith, vice president of labor and litigation for the Illinois
Policy Institute, said CTU did not release the audits willingly.
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A member of the Chicago Teachers Union wears a shirt with the
organization’s logo during a rally at the Illinois State Capitol,
May 15, 2024. Photo: Catrina Barker / The Center Square
“It took pressure from multiple fronts. Members had to file a
lawsuit, a U.S. House committee started investigating, the
Department of Labor sent a letter to the union indicating it might
suspect some financial mismanagement,” Smith told TCS.
CTU said it has always been in compliance with its own bylaws, but
Smith said it took a lawsuit for members to get the audits the
bylaws entitle them to get.
“That lawsuit would have had no legs. It would have been dismissed
if CTU had released the audits as it claimed,” Smith said.
Smith said the both House committee and the Department of Labor
appear to be looking into whether CTU is following the law in terms
of transparency to members and whether the law or the way the Labor
Department collects data needs to be changed.
“The House investigation appears to have started because that House
committee was looking for general information on how the labor laws
work and if they are properly assisting members in obtaining
accountability from their leaders and ensuring transparency,” Smith
said.
CTU leadership said the letter from the Republican-led committee
requested five years of audits, related meeting minutes and member
requests to review them based on citations exclusively from the
Illinois Policy Institute.
“We’re being investigated because we make improving the education,
communities, and lives of our Black, Latine, and largely low-income
student body our first order of business,” said the CTU leaders’
update.
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