Facts
- Oklahoma enacted a statute requiring all state officers and employees to take a loyalty oath as a condition of employment.
- The oath required the affiant to swear they were not, and within the prior five years had not been, a member of any organization officially listed by the U.S. Attorney General (or other federal authority) as a “communist front” or “subversive.”
- Faculty and staff at a state college refused to take the oath within the statutory 30-day period.
- A taxpayer sued to enjoin state officials from paying salaries to employees who had not signed the oath; the employees intervened and challenged the statute’s constitutionality.
- The Oklahoma Supreme Court construed the statute to disqualify employees solely for membership in a listed organization, regardless of whether the employee knew the organization’s character or aims.
Issues
- Whether a state may, consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, exclude public employees solely for past or present membership in an officially listed “subversive” organization without regard to the employee’s knowledge of the organization’s activities and purposes.
Decision
- The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
- As construed to impose disqualification based on bare membership without regard to knowledge, the statute violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The Court found it unnecessary to address other constitutional challenges (including bill of attainder, ex post facto, and impairment of contracts).
Legal Principles
- Due process forbids a state, when using organizational membership as a basis for excluding persons from public employment, from treating innocent association the same as knowing association.
- Public employment is not exempt from due process limits; exclusion from government service may not rest on classifications that are patently arbitrary or discriminatory.
- A regime that conclusively presumes disloyalty from membership alone, without considering scienter, violates due process.
Conclusion
The Court held that Oklahoma’s loyalty-oath scheme, as interpreted to disqualify employees solely for membership in federally listed organizations regardless of knowledge, was an arbitrary classification and therefore unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.