As delegates of America’s largest teachers’ union prepare to gather in Denver next week to choose a new leader, former New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) president Sean Spiller is trying to take his Garden State record national.
But though Spiller’s list of credentials in New Jersey politics and education policy is long, two longtime teachers believe that record deserves scrutiny.
Spiller is seeking the presidency of the National Education Association (NEA)—the NJEA’s national affiliate—roughly a year after unsuccessfully running for governor. Roselle teacher Dr. Marie Dupont and Hamilton Township teacher Ann Marie Pocklembo allege in a lawsuit that Spiller and other NJEA officials backed his primary campaign with $40 million of union members’ mandatory dues without their consent.
The teachers argue that by funneling their dues through a union-controlled PAC and political organizations with union ties, the NJEA violated its contract with members. Their membership documents presented supporting the union’s PACs as voluntary and regular membership dues as separate—but that wasn’t true, Dupont and Pocklembo say.
The money trail matters.
According to the teachers’ legal filings, in 2013, the NJEA created a super PAC called Garden State Forward and funded it over the next decade-plus with $114 million in dues—including dues from teachers who had chosen not to fund the union’s PACs. And it appears the NJEA didn’t publicly discuss its connection to Garden State Forward until 2024, after Spiller announced his run for governor and after the NJEA decided to send a large chunk of that money to Garden State Forward.
Garden State Forward then sent more than $40 million to two more union-tied political organizations: Protecting Our Democracy and Working New Jersey, which spent the money on campaign ads, mailers, and flyers promoting Spiller.
All the while, the NJEA may have skirted federal tax law by failing to disclose its contributions to Garden State Forward as political activity on its tax forms, according to a complaint that the New Jersey Policy Institute filed with the IRS.
In some respects, Spiller and the NJEA may have simply been following the NEA’s lead. According to a recent report by a group including Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab, the NEA reported less than $100,000 in staff compensation for political work in the 2024 fiscal year—a 99% drop from its prior decade average of $7.9 million—even though its overall political spending did not appear to drop with it. The next year, that compensation category bounced back.
“What this shows is that political activity is heavily externalized,” the report concludes, “with substantial resources routed through organizations outside the unions’ direct reporting structure, while internal allocations may understate the extent to which staff and leadership are engaged in political work.”
For Dupont and Pocklembo, Spiller’s alleged self-dealing makes this all even more troubling. The NJEA’s conflict of interest policy considers it “possible grounds for removal” for a union executive to “[take] advantage of his or her position as an NJEA Executive Committee member for furthering his or her own financial or material gain.”
Yet the teachers’ complaint claims that Spiller used NJEA member contact information to send emails requesting campaign contributions from his official NJEA email account, signed as the NJEA’s president, and even labeled as “Copyright NJEA.” This appears to violate not only NJEA policy, but also state law, which imposes a fiduciary duty on union officials, which the teachers allege prohibits conflicts of interest.
When Dupont and Pocklembo went to court, Spiller and the NJEA tried to use a legal maneuver to silence them.
New Jersey has an Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) statute, a law intended to stop lawsuits that would chill protected speech. It’s a countermeasure typically used, for instance, against powerful organizations attempting to silence journalists or whistleblowers by dragging them through extended and expensive litigation.
In this case, Spiller and NJEA officials ran an organization that takes in more in a day than Dupont and Pocklembo earn in a year. But the union attempted to turn the statute against the teachers and force them to pay the legal bills of the very people they accused of misusing their dues.
The court rejected Spiller and the NJEA’s maneuver, citing the “inescapable conclusion that the [Plaintiffs’] claims are based on the [Defendants’] alleged misuse of general union membership dues.” But Spiller and the NJEA have appealed.
Spiller’s attempt to make Dupont and Pocklembo pay for challenging him is hard to reconcile with the message he is now sending to NEA delegates. On his campaign website, Spiller calls for “a comprehensive effort. . . that defends our rights, elevates our voices, and ensures educators receive the respect and support we have earned.”
Dupont and Pocklembo believe those delegates should look beyond Spiller’s rhetoric and see his legacy at the NJEA as they do: an argument for a reckoning, not a promotion.
