If you think (as I do) that Donald Trump has too much power over the lives of everyday citizens, then this was a fantastic week of news from the Supreme Court. In several different ways, the Supremes reaffirmed that there are limits to what the Government can force us to do, or who they may force us to do it with.

One of the most important of those decisions was Janus v. AFSCME, which corrected a previous First Amendment case which had become a ridiculous outlier in our nation’s free speech jurisprudence. Janus said simply that the Government cannot force you to financially support a private political organization with which you personally disagree, and that it makes no difference if that private political organization assures everyone that forcibly taking their money is “for your own good.” 

But because the private political organizations in question are labor unions, who are the ATMs of Democratic politicians, Democrats are apoplectic. (If those same labor unions began endorsing and funding Republicans – and with Trump having successfully positioned himself as the champion of the blue collar working stiff, I could see that being a real thing in the future – one can bet that “principled” position would change overnight.) The reaction from these politicians has been so ignorantly (and/or dishonestly) over the top that it’s worth having a little annotation fun with one of their press releases. Let’s take Senate Candidate Jacky Rosen’s:

"The Supreme Court’s decision deals a major blow to our unions, who provide working Americans with a path to the middle class,” said Rosen.

First of all, Janus only applies to public employee unions, because it is the government who then compels the non-union-member employee to pony up. The failure to make this distinction makes the second half of this opening statement even sillier than it already is. Traditional trade unions might pluck a young high school grad up and help get him trained and proficient so he can make more money, but teachers? Lawyers? Administrative assistants? IT folks? Usually the people hired by the government for those positions already have those skills, at least at a basic level. No one is going to argue that teachers are overpaid, but it’s equally absurd to suggest Nevada’s teachers – already college educated and qualified to work – are not already “middle class” by the time they join the union.

"Fair-share fees are necessary to support collective bargaining activities that benefit all workers so that they can advocate for better wages, safer working conditions, and protect themselves from arbitrary workplace decisions.”

“Fair-share fees” or “agency fees” is the nice way to describe the money a union forcibly takes from non-members. If you didn’t pay it, even if you didn’t like what the union was up to, you’d be fired, which is a hell of a way to “protect” workers from “arbitrary workplace decisions.” 

And they are not “necessary” for better pay or safer conditions. First of all, there are plenty of government employees who politicians fall all over to support without the benefit of a union.

Second, plenty of government employees who are unionized operate without needing this protection racket nonsense. As Justice Alito pointed out in the Court’s opinion, 27 percent of federal employees (nearly one million people!) are unionized, and yet federal law prohibits agency fees. Twenty-eight states similarly ban or limit them. And yet those unions are still robust and politically active – and they have to actually earn dues paying member support by convincing employees the union really does provide a benefit to them.

"As a former union member, I understand the support that labor organizations bring to families. That’s why I will continue fighting to ensure Nevada’s workers have the ability to advocate for themselves and their union rights.”

Nothing in Janus prevents employees from advocating “for themselves.” In fact, Janus is a perfect example of how powerful a single employee is when he chooses to take on a powerful organization which he believes is doing him injury – Mark Janus himself was a public employee who had enough of a public union he believed was doing harm to both himself, his state’s long term financial solvency, and his fundamental constitutional rights, and he went and did something about it.

And nothing prevents unions from doing their thing – they just have to get dues the old fashioned way – by convincing potential dues-payers that they still have value to add. Unless you insultingly believe that public employees are too stupid to know what’s good for them, you must embrace their freedom to associate – or not associate – with any given organization. If you have to coerce people into financially supporting you by force, it’s probably fair to question whether the people you “represent” believe you’re adding value to their lives. In Wisconsin, when agency fees were abolished statutorily, public employee union membership plummeted – so the unions probably have some reason to worry.

The apoplexy over Janus has nothing to do with protecting public employees – if those employees believe their unions are a benefit to them, Janus will change nothing. Rather, it has everything to do with raw political power for the Democratic Party, and those people who believe adult US citizens can’t be trusted to handle their own affairs. The fact that Rosen and her fellow party members can’t be more honest about what Janus actually does (and does not do) speaks volumes as to the weakness of their intellectual and policy arguments.

One of the many reasons I didn’t vote for Mr. Trump was his rhetorical hostility to core First Amendment concepts, and I believed that he would not appoint judges whom he suspected would try to limit his power. But with Janus and other recent First Amendment cases, the justice he appointed has voted to limit the power of government mandates in favor of individual citizens’ civil rights to freely speak (or not), associate (or not), or exercise their religion (or no religion at all). In each of these cases, Democrats such as Jacky Rosen have responded with wailing and gnashing of teeth, ignoring actual facts, and lamenting that Donald Trump’s government isn’t retaining enough power to boss us all around in the name of “democracy.” 

I still don’t trust the president on this or a host of other issues, but given their records, I trust his opponents even less. It will be interesting to see who he will choose to replace Justice Kennedy. In the meantime, the glory of Janus (and cases like it) is that more limited the size and scope of his government is, the less of that trusting any of us will have to do.

Orrin Johnson has been writing and commenting on Nevada and national politics since 2007. He started with an independent blog, First Principles, and was a regular columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal from 2015-2016. By day, he is a deputy district attorney for Carson City. His opinions here are his own. Follow him on Twitter @orrinjohnson, or contact him at [email protected].