Is your retirement fund subsidizing Wall Street's political agenda in Washington? For too many firefighters, teachers, police officers and other public workers, the answer is yes.

We've recently seen a string of "pay-to-play" scandals in California, New York, and other states, where politically-connected financial executives gain access to public pension money in exchange for political campaign contributions. Now, state political parties are taking this issue to federal court — not to protect public pensions, but to fight for their "right" to fill their coffers with cash from Wall Street executives.

There are different versions of the pension-money-for-campaign-money scam, but it often goes like this: A Wall Street "investment adviser," either directly or through an intermediary, arranges for a contribution to an influential politician, or someone closely connected. In return, the politician arranges for the pension fund to make a massive investment with the contributor's firm. The investment adviser gets an annual "advisory fee": a percentage of the assets invested, and a "performance bonus" if they go up in value. These fees can add up to over 1 percent of the assets. With hundreds of millions of dollars invested, that fee adds up quickly. To keep this lucrative business, the investment adviser makes another contribution to the politician, and the vicious cycle continues.

In New York, $50,000 in contributions to former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi was enough to funnel $50 million from the state retirement fund to a private investment firm. The financier who arranged that deal pocketed $3 million. Another financier got a $175 million investment deal after paying Hevesi's top political consultant $320,000.

To a Wall Street honcho expecting millions of dollars in fees, $50,000 in political contributions might seem like a reasonable business expense. And if you want to keep that deal, then every year it's worth earmarking a portion of those fees for "ongoing political contributions."

The Securities and Exchange Commission eventually brought charges in the New York case. And it passed a regulation to limit future scandals like it. The pay-to-play rule prevents investment advisers from making deals with government agencies if the company itself, or key employees, have recently made political contributions to the government officials overseeing the agency.

Now, after the Supreme Court's ruling in McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission, which swept away limits on how much money any one "high roller" can donate to political candidates, political parties think they have legal ground to challenge the SEC rule in court. They're claiming that the pay-to-play rule violates Wall Street's First Amendment rights.

But who's looking out for the First Amendment rights of the firefighters, teachers, and cops whose pension money is at stake?

The pension system is funded by mandatory deductions from their salary. They don't get to choose how their money is invested, but they certainly don't want it used for political purposes. No one believes that New York's public servants wanted their pension money going to Alan Hevesi's campaign funds.

Back in the 1970s, there was a similar issue involving labor unions. Many unions would charge everyone — including those who didn't want to join — the same dues. And the unions spent some of that money on political contributions. So people who didn't want to join the union in the first place were forced to subsidize political contributions that they didn't want to make. They took it all the way up to the Supreme Court, which said that employees have a First Amendment right not to be compelled to subsidize political contributions from their salaries.

It's similar here. The pension money that provides the advisory fees ultimately belongs to real people — firefighters, teachers, cops, and other public workers — who don't want to be forced to participate in a legalized scam in which their hard-earned retirement savings are recycled through "advisory fees" and into politicians' coffers.

The political parties and Wall Street representatives claim this is a First Amendment issue. But pension fund pay-to-play violates the First Amendment right of public servants not to be forced to subsidize someone else's political contributions.

The SEC rule protects that right. Let's not put the interests of Wall Street over the First Amendment rights of the people who live and work on Main Street.