Agency fees in public-sector unions are no longer legal. The Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME held that charging a government employee any mandatory payment to a union they haven’t joined violates the First Amendment. Every dollar that now moves from a public employee’s paycheck to a union requires that employee’s clear, affirmative consent.1Supreme Court of the United States. Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, et al.
What Agency Fees Were
For about four decades, public-sector unions in many states collected what were called agency fees or “fair share fees” from workers who chose not to join. The payments covered the non-member’s share of the union’s bargaining, grievance-handling, and contract-administration costs, and excluded spending on political or ideological activity. Non-members paid less than full members and gave up voting rights and member-only benefits in exchange.
The Supreme Court authorized this arrangement in its 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, reasoning that because every worker in a bargaining unit benefits from the union’s contract, requiring non-members to chip in prevented free-riding and preserved “labor peace.”2Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. Abood v. Detroit Board of Education That framework governed public-sector labor finance across much of the country until 2018.
How Janus Changed the Rule
In June 2018, the Supreme Court overturned Abood in Janus v. AFSCME. The case was brought by Mark Janus, an Illinois state employee who objected to paying agency fees to a union whose bargaining positions he opposed. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito concluded that public-sector collective bargaining is inherently speech about matters of public concern — how tax dollars are spent, how public services are staffed, what public employees are paid — and that forcing workers to fund that speech violates the First Amendment.3Justia US Supreme Court. Janus v. AFSCME, 585 US ___ (2018)
The Court also rejected the two rationales that had propped up Abood. Labor peace, it said, does not depend on mandatory fees, because unions function in right-to-work states without them. And the free-rider problem is one unions accept when they seek the role of exclusive representative.
The decision applied immediately to every state and local government employer in the country. Agency fees became unenforceable overnight. As of 2025, about 32.9 percent of public-sector workers belong to a union, and every one of those memberships now rests on a purely voluntary financial arrangement.4Bureau of Labor Statistics. Union Members Summary – 2025 A01 Results
The Affirmative Consent Requirement
Janus didn’t just eliminate the fees. It set a high bar for any union-related payroll deduction. Because paying dues means subsidizing private speech on public issues, agreeing to pay is treated as a waiver of a First Amendment right. That waiver cannot be presumed, implied, or buried in fine print. The employee has to say yes clearly, in writing, before any money leaves the paycheck.
What “clear and affirmative consent” looks like in practice is still being litigated. Federal circuit courts have handled disputes where employees claimed their authorization was signed under pressure, forged, or ignored after they tried to revoke it. At least six circuits have allowed deductions to continue in cases with questionable consent evidence, reasoning that the union itself is a private organization rather than a government actor bound by the Constitution. The constitutional rule is clear; the enforcement mechanisms have not fully caught up.
How to Stop Union Dues From Coming Out of Your Paycheck
If you are a state or local government employee and want to end dues deductions, start with the authorization card you originally signed. Somewhere on that card is language describing when and how you can revoke. Many cards lock the employee into deductions for a set period and allow cancellation only during a short annual window. Some states have codified those narrow windows into law, and a few allow as little as 10 days per year to opt out. Whether such tight windows can survive under Janus’s consent framework is an open constitutional question that the Supreme Court has not yet answered.
Practical steps:
- Read your authorization card and identify the revocation window and required method.
- Send your cancellation in writing to both the union and your employer’s payroll office.
- Keep a timestamped copy of what you sent and proof of delivery.
- Watch your next few pay stubs to confirm the deduction stops.
If your employer keeps deducting dues after a valid revocation, your primary route to a remedy is through your state’s public employment relations board or state court, not federal court.
What to Do If Dues Are Deducted Without Your Consent
If money is coming out of your paycheck for a union you never authorized to take it, or based on an authorization you already revoked, the practical question is who to complain to.
Federal courts have generally held that a union is not a “state actor” for constitutional purposes. That means suing the union directly under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for unauthorized deductions is usually a dead end, even when the union supplied the incorrect authorization to the payroll office. Multiple circuits have reached this result.
State law is the better route. Most states treat unauthorized dues deductions as an unfair labor practice, and state labor relations boards can order the employer or union to stop and to refund what was taken. A state-court claim for conversion or breach of the authorization agreement is also possible. If the signature on the authorization was forged, state criminal fraud and forgery statutes may apply.
Document the problem carefully. Save any revocation form you submitted along with proof of when you sent it, and keep every pay stub showing the deductions that continued.
Federal Employees Are Covered by a Separate System
If you work for the federal government, Janus is not the statute that protects you. Federal labor relations run under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which has never authorized agency fees. Federal union dues have always been voluntary.
Federal law does impose a one-year lock-in: a dues authorization cannot be revoked during the first year after the employee signs it.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 7115 – Allotments to Representatives After that first year, the Federal Labor Relations Authority’s current regulation allows revocation at any time. The FLRA confirmed in March 2026 that the “revoke at any time” rule remains in effect, and the Office of Personnel Management updated Standard Form 1188 in December 2025 to reflect it.6Federal Register. Miscellaneous and General Requirements
To cancel federal union dues, complete SF-1188, include your name and employee ID, sign it, and submit it to your payroll office. The cancellation takes effect at the start of the first full pay period after payroll receives it, assuming the first year has passed.7Office of Personnel Management. Cancellation of Payroll Deductions for Labor Organization Dues For unauthorized federal deductions, the FLRA handles unfair labor practice complaints; your agency’s inspector general is another option.
What the Union Still Owes You Even If You Pay Nothing
The end of mandatory fees did not end the union’s obligations to workers in the bargaining unit. A union certified as the exclusive representative for a group of public employees owes a duty of fair representation to every worker it represents, whether or not they pay dues. For federal workers, the statute is explicit: the exclusive representative must represent all employees in the unit “without discrimination and without regard to labor organization membership.”8Federal Labor Relations Authority. The Statute – 7114 Representation Rights and Duties State labor laws impose parallel duties on state and local unions.
In practice, the union cannot cut a side deal that benefits members at non-members’ expense, and it cannot refuse to process a legitimate grievance because someone isn’t paying dues. Courts ask whether the union acted arbitrarily, discriminatorily, or in bad faith.
There is a wrinkle. The duty of fair representation doesn’t guarantee identical service in every situation, because a union has discretion over which grievances to take to arbitration and can weigh their merits. It just can’t base that judgment on membership status. A small number of states have passed laws explicitly permitting unions to decline grievance representation for non-members in some circumstances, which creates a real tension with the traditional duty that courts have yet to resolve.
Can You Break Away From the Union Entirely?
Some public employees have argued that if they can’t be forced to pay the union, they shouldn’t be forced to have it speak for them either. Those challenges target exclusive representation itself, the rule that one certified union bargains for every worker in the unit.
Courts have so far rejected the argument. By one count, 36 lawsuits have challenged exclusive representation since Janus, and none have succeeded. The Supreme Court has declined to take up multiple appeals. Lower courts have acknowledged the tension between Janus and the Court’s older decision in Minnesota State Board for Community Colleges v. Knight, which upheld exclusive representation, but they have followed Knight on the ground that only the Supreme Court can overrule its own precedents. Exclusive representation remains the law even though mandatory fees do not.
Religious Objections to Paying a Union
Employees with sincerely held religious objections to joining or funding a union have a separate protection under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The traditional accommodation, developed under Abood, was to let the objector pay an amount equal to their dues to a mutually agreed charity instead of the union.9U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Questions and Answers – Religious Discrimination in the Workplace
After Janus, the logic of that accommodation has weakened. If non-members owe the union nothing, some scholars argue there is no basis for requiring a religious objector to pay anyone at all. The question hasn’t been resolved definitively, and it matters most for current union members who want to stop paying dues on religious grounds while keeping the practical benefits of membership in place.