Today was a historic day.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s issued its long-anticipated ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, affirming the right of literally millions of state, county and local employees around the country to decide for themselves whether to continue paying dues and or fees to a labor union whose values they may not share.

In his majority opinion for Janus, Justice Alito included the following essential language:

“Neither an agency fee nor any other payment to the union may be deducted from a nonmember’s wages, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay. By agreeing to pay, nonmembers are waiving their First Amendment rights, and such a waiver cannot be presumed.”

If that sounds familiar, there’s a reason. The Freedom Foundation encouraged the court to do just that in an amicus brief filed before oral arguments were heard in Janus last February

In a very real sense, the majority opinion in Janus came directly from the Freedom Foundation’s script. After years of fighting the unions, we’ve learned their tricks, and no one is better prepared to continue the struggle in the post-Januslandscape.

As we’ve stressed for months leading up to this momentous decision, there’s still much work to do, but the Freedom Foundation is already doing it. Just as we did following the Harris v. Quinn ruling in 2014, our army of canvassers is already working hard to contact every single public employee we can find to make sure they know about their rights under this latest decision. And our attorneys will continue to challenge every union abuse in court.

In short, we’ll keep doing what works. The unions won’t make it easy, but we have a secret weapon on our side … you.