At a dinner party years ago, a veteran conservative education policymaker admitted to a certain admiration for American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten . "When she speaks," he said, “she knows she’s lying. You know she’s lying. She knows you know she’s lying. So, there’s a refreshing transparency about the whole thing."

Conservatives last week, however, found it less than refreshing when Weingarten testified to Congress that she and her union fought relentlessly to reopen schools during the pandemic. Anyone with a memory longer than a goldfish knows that this is the opposite of the truth. But a short-lived media outrage cycle is inadequate recompense for the untold educational, social, and emotional damage that the teachers unions caused. State legislatures should follow Florida’s lead —and go further — in requiring teachers to make an informed, affirmative choice to support a union through their paycheck.

When the Supreme Court issued its Janus decision in 2018, some experts predicted a mass exodus of union membership. Janus struck down union collection of mandatory "agency fees" for teachers who didn’t join on the grounds that being forced to pay for political speech they didn’t support violated teachers’ First Amendment rights. When teachers could save more money by refusing to join a union, experts predicted that many more would opt out. But this exodus never materialized, in large part, as Daniel DiSalvo and Michael Hartney have documented , because 22 (mostly blue) states quickly passed a raft of laws to bolster union organizing and shield them from the effects of Janus. Laws were passed that assured union access to new employees, made it illegal for public employers to discourage union membership, stipulated that certain services — such as dental coverage — could be denied to non-members, and made it more difficult for union members to quit.

No countercampaign to better inform teachers of the costs of union membership or to make it easier for them to quit ever emerged. The asymmetry was unsurprising: deep-pocketed teachers unions had a profound interest in defending their membership, and there weren’t any particularly powerful special interests to lobby against them.

But the same week that Weingarten testified about her heroic efforts to reopen schools, the Florida legislature passed a first-of-its-kind bill changing how union dues are collected and limiting union promotion. The Employee Organizations Representing Public Employees bill, which is now headed to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s desk, will ban automatic payroll deductions for teachers union dues. Unions would be required to notify their members every year of their membership costs, and public employees who join a union would be required to sign a form acknowledging that Florida is a right-to-work state. What’s more, union members would not be allowed to distribute union literature at work, perform union duties during their taxpayer-funded work hours, and unions would lose certification if they fail to represent at least 60% of eligible employees.

There is no reason why these policies should not become the standard in red states. The only question is whether other legislatures can muster the political will to follow Florida’s lead — and perhaps improve upon its policy prescriptions.

The logic of Janus was that teachers should not be compelled to support political speech they might disagree with. The spirit of Janus can be furthered in laws that lay out the political implication of union dues as teachers make their choice. A state could list overall political giving by a teachers union parent organization (in a typical year, 99% Democrat vs. 1% Republican). They could also highlight specific resolutions adopted by national teachers unions, for example supporting Black Lives Matter or calling for the "decolonization" of curriculum. States could also establish or support alternative professional liability insurance coverage. This coverage is a major reason why teachers decide to join or stay in a union. But teachers can acquire this insurance at a fraction of their overall union dues, and each year before rejoining, teachers could be directly presented with the option of stand-alone coverage.

COVID exposed serious problems in our education system, especially the deleterious influence of teachers union leaders. Any state leader watching with dismay as Randi Weingarten attempts to rewrite history and put herself on the side of the reopeners should carefully consider following Florida’s lead in curbing union power.

Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.