Should anyone be forced to join or give money to a union just to get or keep a job? Polls show most Americans say no —people should be allowed to decide for themselves whether they’ll support a union.

But not all Americans enjoy that freedom. In states without a “Right-to-Work” law, the only choice many workers at unionized businesses have is: pay the union or lose your job.

Fortunately, a growing majority of states now have Right-to-Work laws in effect that protect workers’ freedom to choose. Six states have enacted new Right-to-Work laws just since 2012, bringing the national total to 27. In this decade, the momentum for Right-to-Work laws has become so strong that even some states long thought to be union strongholds, such as Wisconsin and Michigan, have adopted them.

Why? Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s good for states’ economies. According to research by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Right-to-Work states tend to have better wage, job, and population growth than non-Right-to-Work states.

Still, there are stubborn holdouts, including my own state of Illinois. A majority of Illinoisans favor giving workers the right to choose, but it seems unlikely the Illinois legislature will give the people want they want any time soon, thanks to union influence in the state capital and the state’s notorious suppression of political choice.

Illinois is paying a price for this. Since neighbors Indiana and Michigan enacted Right-to-Work laws in 2012, those states have added thousands of new manufacturing jobs on net, while Illinois’ economy has stagnated, with net losses in manufacturing jobs and population.

Seeing the jobs and people fleeing the state, the village of Lincolnshire in suburban Chicago decided not to wait for the Illinois legislature to come around. In December 2015, the village enacted a local Right-to-Work ordinance to protect workers employed in Lincolnshire, the first ordinance of its kind in Illinois.

Unfortunately, Lincolnshire and its workers aren’t enjoying the benefits of that law just yet. It’s been on hold since a group of unions, led by the AFL-CIO’s national office, filed a lawsuit challenging it in early 2016. They argue that federal law only allows states’ central governments, not local governments, to enact Right-to-Work. That case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and the Liberty Justice Center is defending the village’s ordinance pro bono.

Lincolnshire should prevail because it’s on solid legal ground. In 2016, another federal appellate court upheld local Right-to-Work ordinances that several Kentucky counties enacted against an identical challenge from unions. Those county ordinances were credited with attracting unprecedented new investment and led to Kentucky’s passage of a statewide Right-to-Work law in 2017.

Encouraged by Kentucky’s experience, three more local governments in non-Right-to-Work states have recently taken it upon themselves to protect worker freedom.

In December 2017, the city of Seaford, Delaware, enacted the first Right-to-Work law of any kind in the Northeast. Seaford Mayor David Genshaw says he hopes the ordinance will help attract new employers to the city of 7,000, formerly home to a 35-acre DuPont nylon plant that employed hundreds.

In New Mexico, Sandoval County and Otero County passed Right-to-Work ordinances in January 2018 and April 2018, respectively, also hoping to attract new investment and jobs.

A court decision in Lincolnshire’s favor is sure to embolden even more municipalities to enact Right-to-Work, in both Illinois and non-Right-to-Work states nationwide, creating islands of freedom in otherwise unfree states.

And regardless of how the court battles play out, municipalities’ desire to enact local Right-to-Work – even in the face of union lawsuits – shows how desperately many desire the benefits that Right-to-Work can bring. And it suggests that, one way or another, the cause of worker freedom will only continue to advance.

Jacob Huebert is the Director of Litigation at the Liberty Justice Center.