Opt outs will cost unions 47,500,000 annually in lost dues 

Dallas, TX — The Freedom Foundation announced today that it has helped 50,000 public sector employees exercise their First Amendment rights to opt out of union membership in 2025, marking the most successful year since the Supreme Court’s landmark Janus v. AFSCME decision in 2018.

These opt outs represent an estimated $47,500,000 in annual dues that will remain in employees’ pockets rather than union coffers. That is an average of $950 per employee per year.

In response to the news, CEO Aaron Withe released the following statement:

“Fifty thousand public employees exercised their First Amendment rights this year. That’s 50,000 people who now have control over their paychecks and are no longer forced to fund radical left-wing political causes that they don’t support.

“The Supreme Court’s Janus decision made it clear that public employees can’t be forced to bankroll union politics. But most workers still don’t know that. Unions work very hard to make it impossible for workers to opt out—even going as far as to physically lock employees in a room until they sign membership cards.

“Each of these 50,000 opt outs is a person who learned they had a choice and made a decision that was right for them and their family. That is real freedom. The fact that opt-out numbers continue to grow and the unions continue to come up with ways to keep workers in the dark proves exactly why our work matters. We will keep fighting until every public sector employee in America knows they have the right to opt out.”