In The News 27 August 2025

Veteran teacher wins settlement from Ohio Education Association

By J.D. Davidson
The Center Square

The Ohio Education Association settled a lawsuit with a veteran teacher who wanted to stop being a union member and end automatic withdrawal of dues from her credit card.

Beth Queen, a 30-year high school science teacher at Poland Seminary High School, sued the National Education Association in June after a new collective bargaining agreement removed a stipend Queen used to get to teach biology labs.

Unhappy with what amounted to a $9,000 pay cut, Queen quit the Poland Education Association, the OEA and the NEA, according to The Buckeye Institute, a Columbus-based policy group that filed the lawsuit on Queen’s behalf.

The associations acknowledged Queen had left the groups, but continued to charge Queen’s credit card for dues.

The suit asked for the groups to stop charging her credit card for dues, refund the money taken after she quit the union, for the court to order the union not to take any more dues from her, and court costs.

Terms of the settlement were not released, according to The Buckeye Institute.

“With this settlement, the OEA properly recognized Ms. Queen’s claims and avoided costly and protracted litigation for all involved,” said Jay R. Carson, senior litigator at The Buckeye Institute and an attorney representing Queen.

* * *

••• Publisher's note: A free press is critical to having well-informed voters and citizens. While some news organizations opt for paid websites or costly paywalls, The Highland County Press has maintained a free newspaper and website for the last 26 years for our community. If you would like to contribute to this service, it would be greatly appreciated. Donations may be made to: The Highland County Press, P.O. Box 849, Hillsboro, Ohio 45133. Please include "for website" on the memo line.

Add new comment

This is not for publication.
This is not for publication.
About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
Article comments are not posted immediately to the Web site. Each submission must be approved by the Web site editor, who may edit content for appropriateness. There may be a delay of 24-48 hours for any submission while the web site editor reviews and approves it. Note: All information on this form is required. Your telephone number and email address is for our use only, and will not be attached to your comment.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.