Public employee unions in Oregon represent a lot of good people who do good things — teachers, police officers, firefighters and many more.

But that doesn’t mean everything the unions do is good. Public-sector unions fought for years to keep a requirement that employees who didn’t want to be represented by the union be forced to pay fees to the union, anyway.

Those payments were commonly called “fair share payments” or “agency fees.” The argument was the employees benefited from union representation and should be required to defray the costs — even if they weren’t union members.

Those payments were legal. But the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that “extraction of agency fees from nonconsenting public-sector employees violates the First Amendment.”

Debora Nearman, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife employee, just won an important related victory. She filed a federal lawsuit against Service Employees International Union 503 claiming the union violated her First Amendment rights by taking her money and spending it on things she disagreed with. She paid $120 a month in fees, according to the lawsuit. She was not a member of the union. She was represented by the union in bargaining.

Nearman’s husband is Republican state Rep. Mike Nearman. He is no union ally. She alleged in her lawsuit that the union used her money to fight her husband’s re-election and other views she opposed, such as candidates that support abortion rights or the corporate tax initiative Measure 97. After the Janus decision, SEIU returned two years of her fees. It was just shy of $3,000. Nearman did not win the case in court. SEIU settled.

Supporting a union’s causes should be an individual choice, not forced. Other public employees who feel like they were unfairly forced to support union causes should also for their money back.