The court’s 5-4 ruling in Janus vs AFSCME District Council 31 means all those workers in non-right-to-work states can now use union services for free, just as those in RTW states do. That will deprive unions of hundreds of thousands of members and millions of dollars in agency fees, weakening their ability to represent and advocate for all workers.

GOP President Donald Trump, who appointed the key justice, Neil Gorsuch, summarized the political impact in a tweet: “Big loss for the coffers of the Democrats!”

Michigan - already a right-to-work state for both private employees and most in the public sector - is unaffected by the ruling: with one big exception. In 2012, the state Legislature excluded or "carved out" police and firefighters from the state's new right-to-work law - but the Supreme Court ruling doesn't make exclusions. 

The decision effectively makes every state and local government workplace – schools, fire departments, police stations, sanitation departments, state child welfare agencies, public hospitals and more – right-to-work sites when present union contracts expire. 

The court majority “abandons decades of commonsense precedent. In this case, a bare 
majority of the court, over the vigorous dissent of four justices, has conceded to the dark web of corporations and wealthy donors who wish to take away the freedoms of working people,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito – who first prodded the right wing to start Janus and similar cases – bluntly said laws letting unions represent state and local workers and collect “fair share” fees from non-members in those units, violate the non-members’ First Amendment free speech rights. He totally adopted the right wing’s arguments.

“Without those fees, employees have every incentive to free-ride on union dues paid by others,” Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the four dissenters, retorted.

The court’s decision culminates a long campaign by the venal and vicious National Right to Work Committee, its legal defense fund and its corporate backers, led by the stridently anti-worker Koch brothers – rich oilmen from Kansas – to, as one of their advocates put it, “defund the left” by cutting off its cash. Organized labor is a key source of people and contributions for progressive causes.

The ruling also shows the impact of elections on the High Court. The last time the justices heard a similar case, they tied 4-4, after then-Justice Antonin Scalia died. He had been counted on to be the fifth anti-union vote. Trump named right-winger Gorsuch to replace Scalia. Given his prior record on a federal appeals court, unions expected him to be the fifth vote against workers. He was.

Unions blasted the ruling and vowed to shoulder on, re-signing current state and local government worker members and signing up new ones, regardless of the Janus case. 

“Until it is overturned," Trumka said, "this decision will be a political stain on what is intended to be the most honorable, independent body in the world. But more importantly, it will further empower the corporate elites in their efforts to thwart the aspirations of millions of working people standing together for a better life.”

But unions are fighting back through increased organizing successes, Trumka retorted. He noted “more than 14,000 workers recently formed or joined unions in just a single week” and union membership grew by 262,000 last year nationwide. “

The Laborers Union “proudly represents tens of thousands of dedicated, hard-working public employees who are undaunted by the Janus decision," said Laborers President Terry Sullivan. The court… "sided with anti-worker interests whose aim is to weaken unions by seeking to force unions and those who support us to bear the cost of representing free-riders. While the plaintiff’s backers claim this case is about ‘freedom of speech,’ nothing could be further from the truth. The Janus case represents an all-out attack on public sector unions meant 
to diminish the bargaining power of millions of public sector workers and divide us in the workplace.” Laborers members “will continue to stand together and fight together to protect the wages, benefits, and working conditions that come with a union card.”

Roberta Lynch, executive director of AFSCME Council 31 in Illinois, the loser in the case, said “we are extremely disappointed the Supreme Court has taken the side of the powerful few, but we’re more determined than ever to keep our union strong, standing up for public services and the working people who provide them." 

Justice Alito pointed to the federal government, which is effectively a right-to-work site, and without the “agency fees,” which the state laws permit. The agency fees require non-members represented by the union – such as Mark Janus, a child welfare worker in Illinois – to pay only the costs of negotiating contracts and enforcing them. 

But Janus and the RTW crowd, which recruited him and funded the case, argued even that broke his First Amendment rights of free speech, by forcing him to pay – a form of speech, the justices said – for positions he disagrees with on public issues. Alito and the court majority bought that argument, hook, line and sinker. 

Dissenting Justices Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – all named by Democratic presidents -- sharply disagreed. 

“Today, the court succeeds in its six-year campaign to reverse” the 1977 Abood decision that set up the agency fee system, Kagan, wrote for them. Abood she added, “was a paradigmatic example of how government can regulate speech in its capacity as an employer,” by drawing a line between free speech rights of government workers as citizens and as workers. “Not any longer.”

The majority’s ruling “will have large-scale consequences,” Kagan warned. “Public employee unions will lose a secure source of financial support. State and local governments that thought fair-share provisions furthered their interests” in workplace peace and efficiency “will have to find new ways of managing their workforces. And across the country, the relationships of public employees and employers will alter in both predictable and wholly unexpected ways.”

“Rarely, if ever, has this court overruled a decision – let alone one of this import – with so little regard for principles” and precedent, Kagan added.