On November 2, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the federal appeals court whose decisions govern Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, decided Anderson Federation of Teachers v. Rokita. The court held that Indiana may not single out public school teachers for a gauntlet of extra paperwork before their union dues can be deducted from their paychecks. In a unanimous opinion written by Judge John Z. Lee and joined by Judges Diane Sykes and David Hamilton, the court affirmed a permanent injunction that bars the State from enforcing those teacher-only requirements.
At first glance, the case looks like a dispute about payroll mechanics, the sort of administrative minutiae that rarely makes the evening news. It is more than that. The decision offers a clear and instructive look at two First Amendment principles that affect far more people than teachers: the difference between the government speaking for itself and the government forcing others to speak, and the limits on the government’s power to attach strings to the benefits it provides. This article explains what Indiana did, what the court decided, and what the ruling means going forward.
Two Paths to the Same Paycheck Deduction
Indiana, like many states, has a general wage assignment statute, Indiana Code section 22-2-6-2. It allows public and private employees alike to have their employers automatically deduct money from their paychecks for a list of approved purposes, and union dues are on that list. The requirements are modest. The employee must make the request in writing and sign it personally, the employer must agree in writing, and the employee must be able to revoke the arrangement at any time with a written request.
In 2021, the Indiana General Assembly passed Senate Enrolled Act 251, which amended a separate statute, Indiana Code section 20-29-5-6, governing union dues for “school employees.” Under Indiana’s definitions, that term reaches licensed teachers employed by school corporations and teachers at charter schools. In practical terms, as the court observed, the law applied only to public school teachers.
For teachers, and only for teachers, the new law layered on several additional requirements. A teacher who wanted dues deducted had to sign an authorization form containing a prescribed statement, printed in 14-point bold type, acknowledging the teacher’s First Amendment right not to join or financially support a union. The authorization had to be renewed every year. Before honoring the request, the school had to send a message to the teacher’s official work email address and wait for a confirming reply from that same address. And every year, the school had to send each teacher a notice of the right to resign from the union, along with the authorization form and a statement of the amount the teacher would owe if the authorization was not revoked. The law also declared that teachers may resign from their union and end their financial obligation at any time.
No other public employees in Indiana, whether police officers, firefighters, highway workers, or state agency staff, faced any of these extra steps. They could continue to use the ordinary wage assignment process.
How the Case Unfolded
Three teachers’ unions, the Anderson Federation of Teachers, the Avon Federation of Teachers, and the Martinsville Classroom Teachers Association, along with several of their members, sued in federal court in Indianapolis. They raised two arguments under the First Amendment.
The first was a compelled speech claim. As originally written, the required statement on the authorization form was phrased in the first person: the teacher, by signing, declared “I am aware” of a constitutional right to refrain from union membership. The unions argued that the State was putting words in teachers’ mouths. The second was a freedom of association claim: by burdening only teachers, the State was targeting teachers and their unions because of who they are and what they stand for.
Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the Southern District of Indiana initially agreed with the unions on the compelled speech claim and entered a preliminary injunction. The legislature responded with Senate Enrolled Act 297, which rewrote the statement in the State’s own voice. The revised language begins, “The State of Indiana wishes to make you aware” of the right not to join or pay a union, and it addresses the teacher as “you” throughout.
With the revised statement in place, Judge Barker concluded that the form no longer compelled speech. But she found that the teacher-only requirements as a whole amounted to viewpoint discrimination, which violates the First Amendment unless the State can satisfy the most demanding standard of review in constitutional law. Finding that the State could not, she permanently enjoined enforcement. The State appealed. The case was argued in January 2024, and the Seventh Circuit issued its decision nearly three years later.
The First Question: Whose Words Are These?
The First Amendment forbids the government from compelling people to voice its preferred messages. The classic examples are well known. In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), the Supreme Court held that schoolchildren could not be forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. In Wooley v. Maynard (1977), it held that New Hampshire could not require drivers to display the state motto “Live Free or Die” on their license plates. In each case, the government was conscripting private individuals to serve as conduits for its message.
But the First Amendment does not restrain the government’s own speech. When the government speaks for itself, it may say what it wishes, and it need not offer equal time to opposing views. The Supreme Court has explained that the principal check on government speech is not the courts but the ballot box. If voters dislike what their government says, their remedy is political.
The line between the two can be elusive, particularly when, as here, the government writes a message and places it on a form that a private person must sign. Courts resolve the question through a holistic inquiry drawn from Supreme Court decisions such as Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans (2015) and Shurtleff v. City of Boston (2022). They consider the history of the expression, whether the public would likely perceive the government or a private person as the speaker, and how much the government shapes and controls the message.
Applying that framework, the Seventh Circuit concluded that the revised statement is government speech. The State wrote it, the State controls it, and any reasonable reader would understand that the State is the one speaking. The unions argued that a teacher who signs the form effectively adopts its message, but the court disagreed. The revised statement is informational, and its very first words announce that the State, not the teacher, is doing the informing. The form does not ask the teacher to profess anything.
There is a quiet lesson in drafting here. The difference between “I am aware” and “The State of Indiana wishes to make you aware” may seem anodyne, but it carried constitutional weight. The first version enlisted the teacher as the speaker; the second made the State the speaker. Because the Seventh Circuit addressed only the revised language, the State won this portion of the appeal.
The Second Question: May the State Pick Favorites?
The more consequential part of the decision concerns freedom of association, and here the unions prevailed.
The analysis begins from a premise favorable to the State. Both sides agreed that when a public employer processes payroll deductions for union dues, it is providing a form of government subsidy. The Seventh Circuit said exactly that in an earlier case, Wisconsin Education Association Council v. Walker (2013), which upheld portions of Wisconsin’s Act 10. And the Supreme Court held in Ysursa v. Pocatello Education Association (2009) that the First Amendment confers no affirmative right to use a government payroll system to collect money for expression. The government is not obligated to subsidize every union equally, or at all.
That latitude has a firm limit, however. Even when the government is handing out a benefit rather than regulating speech, it may not ration that benefit according to a speaker’s ideology, opinion, or perspective. That principle traces to Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995), in which the Supreme Court held that a public university could not withhold student activity funding from a student publication because of its religious perspective.
Indiana’s law did not mention viewpoint at all. On its face, it simply applied to a category of employees. The court agreed that the requirements were facially neutral but explained that facial neutrality is not the end of the inquiry, because a neutral-sounding rule can serve as a facade for viewpoint discrimination. To look behind the facade, courts consider the government’s stated justifications, whether the law is underinclusive relative to those justifications, and how well the law actually serves the interests it claims to advance.
The State offered two justifications, and neither persuaded the court.
First, the State invoked Janus v. AFSCME (2018), in which the Supreme Court held that public employees who decline to join a union cannot be forced to pay agency fees to it. The court found Janus beside the point. The teachers affected by Indiana’s law had already chosen to join their unions and to pay dues. Janus protects those who do not want to pay; it says nothing about burdening those who do.
Second, the State argued that the extra steps reduce the risk that a school will mistakenly deduct dues from someone who does not want to be in the union. The court’s answer was pointed: if that were truly the concern, one would expect the State to impose the same safeguards on all public employees, not just teachers. A law that addresses a supposed problem for only one narrow group, while ignoring the identical problem everywhere else, invites suspicion that the real aim is to disfavor that group. The Supreme Court made the same point in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011), observing that underinclusiveness raises serious doubts about whether the government is actually pursuing the interest it invokes.
The court then explained why its earlier decision upholding Wisconsin’s Act 10 did not control. That law allowed payroll deductions for a range of public safety unions while denying them to general employee unions. The Seventh Circuit upheld it, reasoning that the favored group was diverse and included unions on both sides of the political divide. (Notably, Judge Hamilton, who joined this opinion, dissented in part in the Wisconsin case, arguing that the distinction there was itself viewpoint discrimination.) Indiana’s law was different in kind. It did not merely affect one group more than others as a side effect; it deliberately singled out one particularized group for burdens that no one else bore.
The State countered that teachers hold a wide range of opinions and therefore cannot be said to share a single viewpoint. The court was unmoved. The question, it said, is not whether teachers agree on everything “lock, stock, and barrel,” adding that they most assuredly do not. The question is whether they share a common perspective from which a variety of subjects may be discussed. The court concluded that it requires no imagination to see that public school teachers and their unions share an overarching interest in promoting teacher salaries and benefits, working conditions, and public education generally. Citing the Supreme Court’s caution in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) that restrictions based on the identity of the speaker are often simply a means to control content, the court agreed with the district court that Indiana’s law effectuated viewpoint discrimination.
Strict Scrutiny, and a Parsimonious Defense
Once a court finds viewpoint discrimination, the law is subject to strict scrutiny. The government must prove that the restriction is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. In practice, this standard is rarely satisfied; courts frequently describe it as fatal in all but extraordinary circumstances.
The State’s defense on this point was notably parsimonious. It argued only that the teacher-specific requirements were rationally related to its interest in avoiding unwanted deductions and shielding itself and school employers from liability. It never contended that those interests were compelling, nor that it could not achieve them by less burdensome means. That left the court with an easy resolution: absent such a showing, the State may not impose extra conditions on the benefit of automatic payroll deduction solely because the employee requesting it is a teacher. The judgment was affirmed.
What the Decision Means
For Indiana public school teachers, the practical result is continuity. The injunction against enforcing the teacher-only requirements remains in place, which means teachers who wish to have dues deducted may do so under the same general rules that apply to other employees, without annual renewal, email verification, or the yearly notice cycle. Teachers who wish to leave their union or stop paying dues retain every right to do so; nothing in this decision diminishes the protections recognized in Janus.
For school corporations and charter schools, the decision provides welcome clarity on payroll administration. Schools should not apply the enjoined procedures, and any administrator with questions about how a particular deduction should be handled should consult the school’s counsel.
For unions and public employers more broadly, the opinion draws a useful map of the terrain. The State retains considerable latitude. It may decline to offer payroll deductions, it may draw neutral distinctions among categories of employees as Wisconsin did, and it may speak in its own voice about employees’ rights. What it may not do is select one identifiable group with a shared perspective and burden that group’s access to a generally available benefit without a compelling justification.
For everyone else, the case is a salutary reminder that the First Amendment looks at substance, not just form. A law need not mention a viewpoint to discriminate against one. When the government singles out a particular class of speakers for special burdens and offers justifications that apply equally to everyone it has chosen to leave alone, courts will look closely at what the law is really doing. That principle protects any group, of any political persuasion, that might one day find itself on the disfavored side of a legislative majority.
What Comes Next
The decision may not be the final word. The State could ask the full Seventh Circuit to rehear the case, or it could petition the United States Supreme Court for review. Unless and until a higher court says otherwise, however, the injunction stands, and Indiana may not enforce the teacher-only dues requirements.
Readers who wish to study the decision itself can read the full opinion. The case is Anderson Federation of Teachers v. Rokita, No. 23-1823 (7th Cir. Nov. 2, 2026).
This article is provided for general educational purposes only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. The law can change, and its application depends on the facts of each situation. If you have questions about your own circumstances, please consult an attorney.
