Public-sector workers have rights. They should not be subjects for pillaging, by whimsical government authorities and union bosses stretching limits of the law. On this, the U.S. Supreme Court finally concurs.

The First Amendment protects individuals from government. It guarantees us the freedom to communicate, to associate, or to disassociate from people and causes we don’t like. Everyone can give thanks for this concept, as they can love puppies, moms, baseball and the Fourth of July.

The First Amendment means no state can force a pro-choice activist to directly support a pro-life pregnancy center. Or, vice versa. It means the state cannot force peace activists to directly fund candidates who support the NRA, or gun owners to fund gun-control candidates.

Only the imagination limits the potential horrors of governments forcing workers to spend hard-earned payroll proceeds on causes they oppose.

Despite common support for the freedom to choose values, causes, candidates and beliefs, governments force workers to commit portions of their wages to labor unions. If the union uses those proceeds to support a candidate or a cause the worker does not like, tough bounce. The union can take dues straight out of payroll, regardless of a worker’s values – even if the employee does not join the union. Public-sector employees have suffered under this affront to liberty for the past 41 years, since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld compulsory dues in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education in 1977.

Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling announced Wednesday, public-sector workers are free at last. It began when plaintiff Mark Janus, a public employee in Illinois, sued to liberate himself from compulsory dues. He refused to join his employer’s labor union, which funds and otherwise advocates a litany of causes he opposes – including collective bargaining. Despite his disassociation from the union, the organization took a portion of his earnings by force. The Abood opinion allowed it. In the 5-4 ruling, the court explained how the now-abated Abood decision imposed “a blanket requirement that all employees subsidize private speech with which they may not agree.”

The fact we lived under this oppressive violation of the First Amendment should chill informed Americans of all political persuasions. Aside from the obvious free speech issues, workers should object to losing wages to anything other than fairly imposed taxation and benefits they agreed to fund upon accepting employment.

Incredibly, dissenters in the ruling invoked the First Amendment as rationale for their objection to workers’s rights.

“The First Amendment was meant for better things,” wrote dissenting Justice Elena Kagan. “It was meant not to undermine but to protect democratic governance – including over the role of public-sector unions.”

The dissent reads like gobbledygook because it rests on spongy rationale. Never did the founders contemplate imposing compulsory dues while writing the First Amendment. They wrote the First Amendment to limit the role of government and maximize an individual’s province over words, actions, values and personal associations.

Nothing in the Bill of Rights increases government authority over individuals. Framers crafted the amendments to protect individuals from government. Period.

Founders wrote the First Amendment more than 100 years before anyone conceived of a public-sector union. Kagan’s tortured logic has no place on the Supreme Court.

“The majority has overruled Abood for no exceptional or special reason, but because it never liked the decision. It has overruled Abood because it wanted to,” Kagan wrote.

In stark contrast, the majority cited founding-era evidence and court precedent to determine nothing “supports the view that the First Amendment was originally understood to allow States to force public employees to subsidize a private third party. If anything, the opposite is true…

“The First Amendment is violated when money is taken from nonconsenting employees for a public-sector union; employees must choose to support the union before anything is taken from them,” the ruling said. “Accordingly, neither an agency fee nor any other form of payment to a public-sector union may be deducted from an employee, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay.”

Wednesday’s ruling expands liberty for government workers by upholding the First Amendment. Unions no longer can take money, by force, from employees who choose not to join. If union bosses want dues, they should win the hearts and minds of individuals they hope to represent. It will improve the quality of unions and the lives of their members.