Unions are in anguish over the Supreme Court’s Janus decision Wednesday that affirms public employees’ First Amendment right not to pay union dues. The Supreme Court’s Janus ruling doesn’t just grant workers freedom — there’s every reason to expect workers will exercise that freedom by choosing not to support public sector unions.

As of 2009, public sector union members outnumbered private sector for union workers for the first time, and unlike private sector unions, the number of public sector union workers has actually been growing. That was actually something of a political liability. Republicans increasingly harped on the use of taxpayer-funded mandatory union fees to lobby for higher public-sector union pay and benefits when compensation was already generous relative to the private sector average. (This is also why, once upon a time, Democrats such as FDR and the former head of the AFL-CIO opposed the creation of public unions, which largely took off in the 1950s.) Further, public unions were some of the biggest, and in the case of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), often the biggest spenders in recent election cycles.