This opinion piece appeared in The Columbus Dispatch.

As a public-school teacher who has been teaching Spanish to high school students in Marietta for 15 years now, I cannot imagine a more rewarding job.

However, in order to practice my beloved profession, I was forced to pay approximately $14,000 to the union over the course of my career. The exact amount is as indecipherable as Cretan hieroglyphics and just as shrouded in mystery. These fees were extracted from me even though I profoundly disagreed with how those funds were spent and with the “representation” my union purportedly conducted on my behalf.

That money was used on a political agenda, which even included — as I discovered in 2010 — a political campaign waged against my own husband who was then running for office. Imagine my dismay when I received political propaganda against my husband’s candidacy that was paid for and mailed by an organization related to my own union.

I have since resigned my union membership and, with it, my voting rights. As a result, I have been subjected to bullying and ridicule from my colleagues and administration. Shortly after I became a fee-payer, my car was vandalized several times in the faculty parking lot where it endured multiple punctured tires. Was it an unfortunate coincidence, or was it more likely punishment for the objections I had raised? And what about our former school superintendent who (during his opening-day speech) publicly shamed any teacher who disavowed the union as a “right-wing extremist threat to public education?”

No one deserves to be treated this way because of her beliefs. I should not be forced to accept how my union speaks “for” me. My union, the Marietta Education Association never asked me whether it was OK to spend my earnings to oppose my husband’s campaign for office. It never asked whether I approved of the positions it was negotiating “on my behalf,” such as requiring the district to make layoff decisions in cases of a tie in seniority by a coin flip without any consideration of merit — even if the tie were between the teacher of the year and a poorly performing teacher! I also oppose positions advocated by the union that exclude teachers who are not union members from participation in the Evaluation Committee or the Student Growth Measures Committee.

Here I am, even after the Janus decision, still forced to accept the MEA as my “exclusive representative” even though I am no longer a member and despite its controversial partisan agenda, continued political attacks on my husband, retaliatory tactics designed to intimidate me into silence and woefully dismal negotiating positions.

I am not opposed to collective bargaining. But everyone should have the freedom to decide whether to join a union or be represented by it, particularly if that union does not, cannot, or will not represent that person’s values. The MEA does not seek and never has sought to be my voice, and isn’t that the very essence of “representation?”

After the Supreme Court ruled on June 27 that I no longer have to pay for the MEA’s unwanted, exclusive “representation,” I decided to reject my forced association with the MEA and filed a lawsuit seeking the opportunity to speak for myself or find other representation. Accordingly, I asked The Buckeye Institute to help me defend my rights in court and demand a long overdue end to my forced association with, and representation by, the MEA.

The court ought to recognize the common-sense proposition that just like any other organization, a labor union has no inherent right to force anyone to accept its exclusive representation. Doing so is un-American, unconstitutional and unacceptable.

I am proud to fight for my, and all school teachers’, constitutionally protected freedom of speech and freedom of association, and to tell my union the same thing I tell my Spanish classes when they become unruly — ¡No más!

Jade Thompson is a Spanish teacher at Marietta High School.