On Labor Day, grandstanding union bosses aren’t likely to be extolling the rights of those hardworking employees who disagree with their agenda. But just as pro-union employees deserve a right to voluntarily join and participate in a union, those who oppose unions deserve the right to opt out.

This principle, which is the core of Right to Work, is more than just a popular, commonsense idea: Since 2018, it’s been enshrined in the U.S. Constitution for public employees.

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In the landmark Janus v. AFSCME case, argued by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, the Supreme Court recognized that public sector workers have a First Amendment right to abstain from paying dues to a union. The court also ruled that government employers can’t deduct union dues from a public worker’s paycheck unless the worker affirmatively consents to dues payments.

The Supreme Court didn’t mince words in its Janus decision: “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” (emphasis added).

However, that hasn’t completely stopped government union bosses and state legislatures around the country from flouting the decision and seizing money from public servants who refuse union membership and dues payment. This money, unsurprisingly, is used by union officials to pursue a partisan agenda that many public workers disagree with.

Even worse, the only reason that scofflaw union bosses are able to defy Janus is because lower court judges are doing legal gymnastics to read Janus effectively out of existence in many states. The Supreme Court must step in and reaffirm Janus’s constitutional command that public employees have a free choice when it comes to subsidizing a public sector union’s agenda.

Two cases seeking a Supreme Court hearing are perfect vehicles for the justices to expose flawed circuit court reasoning and save Janus. One of these, Klee v. International Union of Operating Engineers, involves California prison guard Terry Klee, who in 2019 requested an end to both his union membership and dues deductions. He filed a federal lawsuit after his bosses at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation continued to funnel dues payments from his wages into IUOE union coffers for almost two years after his request.

The district court and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals waved away this obvious violation of Klee’s Janus rights by claiming IUOE bosses are not “state actors” and can’t be subject to the First Amendment. Such reasoning conveniently ignores that California state law gives IUOE union bosses the power to order agencies such as CDCR to deduct dues on the union’s behalf. It’s hard to imagine where state action isn’t present in that process.

A similar case, Todd v. AFSCME, comes to the Supreme Court from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Marcus Todd, a security counselor for the Minnesota Department of Human Services, also maintains in his lawsuit that union dues continued to come out of his paycheck after he invoked his Janus rights and requested the deductions stop. But his case has a twist: The document that union officials were using as their original justification for taking dues from Todd’s paycheck likely contained his forged signature.

A letter from an AFSCME union official to Todd’s attorney contains the insane statement that “even if there are facts … that your client could present during litigation that would raise doubts about the authenticity of his signature … we still do not believe your client would prevail” (emphasis added). In other words, AFSCME legal operatives believe that union forgeries can nullify public employees’ First Amendment Janus rights.

But the only thing more ridiculous than the AFSCME union’s argument is the fact that the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals let them get away with it: Like the Ninth Circuit, the judges in Todd’s case ruled that union bosses are not “state actors” and thus his case should be dismissed.

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This legal charade by union bosses and circuit courts that seem to want to wish Janus out of existence needs to end. While hundreds of thousands of public employees have been able to cut off union payments under Janus, lower courts’ reluctance to follow the Supreme Court’s language in the decision leaves millions of other public sector employees unable to exercise their fundamental right of free association.

The Supreme Court should not let lower federal courts ignore one of its most consequential First Amendment decisions in decades. In defending it, the court will also defend the rights of millions of public servants.

Mark Mix is the president of the National Right to Work Foundation