When thousands of teachers gather in Denver in July to decide who will lead America’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association (NEA), only one candidate will be touting the endorsement of Kevin Vick, the most powerful teachers’ union official in Colorado.
Any change in the NEA’s priorities will impact the 40,000 educators represented by the national union’s Colorado affiliate, the Colorado Education Association (CEA), which Vick leads. He has endorsed his former counterpart in New Jersey, Sean Spiller, for the NEA’s top job. But one Garden State teacher says Spiller’s record raises serious questions about transparency and accountability—and that Colorado educators and union delegates deserve the unvarnished truth.
Teachers challenge political spending
This past September, New Jersey elementary school teacher Dr. Marie Dupont sued Spiller and the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA). Dupont alleges they broke the law in how they routed tens of millions of dollars in teachers’ mandatory dues through a series of opaque, union-tied political organizations to back Spiller’s 2025 bid for governor while he was still the NJEA’s president.
“I believe educators deserve to understand the full record of anyone seeking national union leadership,” Dupont said. “What concerns me most is the precedent that is set when union leaders appear to place their own political interests ahead of the transparency and trust they owe to members.”
Vick stated he is supporting Spiller because “we must move beyond the way things always have been done.” Dupont and fellow New Jersey teacher Ann Marie Pocklembo, who is also part of the lawsuit, do not believe Spiller’s way of doing things is something for educators to applaud.
The union’s broken promise to teachers lies at the heart of their case, Dupont and Pocklembo allege. The NJEA’s membership documents told teachers that their regular membership dues were separate from voluntary contributions to its political action committees, according to the teachers’ court filings.
But their lawsuit alleges that over the span of about a decade, the NJEA covertly funded a PAC called Garden State Forward with $114 million in teachers’ dues—even from teachers who had chosen not to fund the NJEA’s PACs. Spiller’s campaign raised very few funds on its own during the 2025 campaign cycle, but Garden State Forward sent more than $40 million—originally teachers’ dues—to two more political organizations with connections to the union, which promoted his candidacy with ads, mailers, and flyers.
Spiller’s record under scrutiny
Under Spiller’s leadership, the NJEA also failed to disclose its contributions to Garden State Forward as political activity on its federal tax forms, obscuring its political spending from teachers and the public in possible violation of federal law, according to an IRS complaint filedby the New Jersey Policy Institute.
In backing Spiller, meanwhile, Vick added that the NEA “must be a union of action” that “aligns every resource with our mission.”
The NEA took in more than $450 million in 2025, primarily from teachers’ dues, according to government filings. Dupont says accountability and transparency are critical concerns for anyone hoping to direct those resources.
“There must be clear safeguards, clear disclosures, and clear lines of accountability,” she said. “Members should never be left wondering how their dues are being used or whether their interests are being placed first.”
Her own experience illustrates what can go wrong if safeguards are ignored. When Dupont found out her dues were supporting Spiller’s campaign, she attempted to voice her objections by sending him an open letter. Only after she was met with silence did she explore her legal options.
Her lawsuit finally got Spiller’s attention.
He and the NJEA tried to quickly end the case by invoking New Jersey’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) law, even though it’s typically invoked as a protection for whistleblowers and similar individuals, not unions with $160 million in annual revenue, from being dragged into expensive litigation. Their maneuver requests to force the teachers to pay the legal bills of the very union they accuse of misusing their dues.
A judge denied it, citing the “inescapable conclusion that the [Plaintiffs’] claims are based on the [Defendants’] alleged misuse of general union membership dues.”
The court’s ruling allowed Dupont and Pocklembo’s lawsuit to proceed. But Spiller and the NJEA have appealed it. And the questions that Spiller’s record raises now extend far beyond New Jersey.
Backing the wrong horse
As the NEA comes to Denver, teachers in Colorado will have a front-row seat to a decision shaping the future of a union that represents 3 million educators. Their union president’s endorsement gives them reason to ask: Is he supporting Spiller’s campaign rhetoric, or the record he left behind in New Jersey?
Nathan McGrath is president and general counsel at the Fairness Center, a nonprofit public interest law firm that provides free legal representation to those hurt by public-sector union officials.
