Earlier this month, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon took to social media with an important reminder to teachers: You are not obligated to pay union dues no matter what state you live in. “No employee should feel obligated to hand over their salary to a union that is bankrolling political causes with their hard-earned paycheck,” said Secretary McMahon. “If you choose to stay, that’s your call. The point is, the choice is yours.” The video has been viewed nearly a half million times on x.com alone.
Secretary McMahon’s body slam follows a December 2025 report from the Commonwealth Foundation, which examined spending by the nation’s four largest public unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA). The report found that the unions spent a combined $915 million in partisan elections, a staggering 86% of which came from member dues. Her reminder is important because unions work hard to ensure their message is the only one teachers hear to the exclusion of other organizations that provide similar benefits at a fraction of the cost. Collective bargaining agreements ban groups like Christian Educators and Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana from advertising or recruiting in schools.
Furthermore, collective bargaining agreements in Louisiana prohibit teachers from resigning their membership and ceasing dues payments at any time. For example, members in St. John Parish must resign before September 1 to stop paying dues. A member in that parish who disagreed with his or her union’s call for membership to phone bank for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in November 2004 and wished to resign would have to keep paying dues for nearly one more year.
You can find examples of teachers unions prioritizing political activism over classroom learning from coast to coast. In California, striking San Francisco teachers demanded that parents not have their children complete district-provided homework packets in order to maintain pressure on the school district. And in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas are questioning the extent to which the Florida Education Association (FEA) is involved in organizing student walkouts to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity after a student organizer used a FEA-organized press conference to announce that protests are “required” of his fellow students. Here on the Gulf Coast, the Lafayette Parish Association of Educators’ Facebook page contains posts smearing voucher programs like Louisiana GATOR, and United Teachers of New Orleans are partnering with the Democratic Socialists of America for protests.
Unions shouldn’t have teachers’ paychecks in a chokehold. Teachers should have the freedom to decide for themselves whether union membership reflects their personal priorities, their values, and fits within their budget. No one should be pressured to stay in the ring when they’d rather tap out.
