SEATTLE — Former high school teacher Gary Davenport didn’t have any particular problem with unions and even had a union job in college, but the man whose name is on an anti-union lawsuit to be heard this week by the U.S. Supreme Court says politics kept him from joining up when he got his teaching job in 1998.

“I decided I didn’t want to become a member because of some of the political stances they take,” said Davenport, 32, who was already on his way out of teaching when Davenport v. Washington Education Association was filed in state courts in 2000.

Davenport now looks at the Jan. 10 argument as a once-in-a-lifetime educational opportunity for his three children.

“We’re just normal, everyday Americans,” said Davenport who now works for city government and helps his wife home-school their 8-, 7- and 5-year-old children. The former high school social studies teacher said he left teaching because his growing family needed more money than he earned as a teacher.

“One of the reasons I’m still involved is ... this has been going on and will continue to go on to those teachers who don’t have a voice,” Davenport said. “They really don’t have an opportunity to defend themselves or protect their own money. They’ve kind of been bullied by the unions.”

When the Evergreen Freedom Foundation contacted him and other nonmember teachers, who are still required to pay hundreds of dollars to the union each year to fund contract negotiations, Davenport said their questions caught his attention.

He agreed to let the conservative think tank and longtime union adversary put his name on the lawsuit but now can’t remember the details of the conversation.

Davenport v. WEA has been combined by the Supreme Court with a similar lawsuit filed by the state of Washington against the union. Both cases involve the fees paid to the union by teachers who declined to join.

Under a series of Supreme Court rulings reaching back nearly 30 years, those workers can be charged a fee to pay for labor negotiations that affect them but can’t be forced to pay for the union’s political activism.

At issue this next week is whether the union needs teachers to say “yes” before the fees can be used for political causes or whether teachers must specifically object to having a portion of the fees spent for that purpose.

Both sides agree that the money at issue is minimal — about $10 for each of about 3,000 nonmember teachers — but the union says the multimillion dollar legal cost of the two lawsuits has not been small and that its reputation has been damaged greatly by the ongoing challenge.

“It cost both in terms of actual dues dollars spent and in terms of our good name as an organization,” said WEA president Charles Hasse. “It seemed to stick more in the public’s mind that we were accused of violating campaign-finance laws” than that the union won in the state courts.

Hasse and the union maintain they have consistently followed the state’s campaign-finance law, even while receiving conflicting and “shifting “ guidance from state officials.

The union has given money to initiative campaigns on subjects related to education, such as reducing class size and increasing teacher pay. It also spends heavily to lobby the Washington Legislature.

One debate in which it has taken a stand opposed by conservative groups like the Evergreen Freedom Foundation was its opposition to charter schools.

Hasse said his organization never contributes union dues or nonmember fees to any candidate election campaign. An affiliated political action committee endorses and supports candidates, mostly Democrats.

“Although we have prevailed, our detractors have used this as an opportunity to trot out every anti-union slogan possible and say it somehow relates to this case,” Hasse said. “It really gets down to a matter of accounting practices, and they’ve made it into a federal case.”

The National Right to Work foundation, the Virginia-based organization whose legal arm will be arguing for the other side, calls the case a legal rescue mission that could eventually lead to rebates of non-bargaining expenses, including money used for political action, lobbying and organizing.

Mike Reitz, labor policy director for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation called the state Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling “An open door inviting all unions in the state to spend nonmember dues however they want.”