Wieman v. Updegraff
Encyclopedia
Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183
(1952), is a unanimous ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that Oklahoma loyalty oath
legislation violated the due process
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
because it did not give individuals the opportunity to abjure membership in subversive organizations. Due process requires that individuals have scienter
(knowledge that their membership or support violates the loyalty oath), and the Oklahoma statute did not accommodate this requirement.
enacted legislation requiring all state officers and employees to take an oath pledging loyalty to the United States of America, affirming that they did not advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and denying direct or indirect involvement with or support of any "agency, party, organization, association, or group whatever which has been officially determined by the United States Attorney General or other authorized agency of the United States to be a communist front or subversive organization".
Several faculty and staff at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College
refused to take the oath within the required 30 days after employment. Paul W. Updegraff, an Oklahoma citizen, sued in the District Court of Oklahoma County to prevent the state from paying these individuals their salaries. The faculty and staff members asked to intervene in the suit, and were permitted to do so. They argued that the Act was a bill of attainder
; an ex post facto law
; made it impossible for them to fulfill their contracts with the state; and violated the due process
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
.
The district court upheld the Act. The faculty and staff appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court
. The Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld the Act. The faculty and staff appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari
.
wrote the opinion for the majority.
Clark accepted the Oklahoma Supreme Court's interpretation that the Act only proscribed membership in and support for those organizations listed on the U.S. Attorney General's list as of the date of enactment. Organizations not on that list, even if communist, were required to be abjurred.
Clark argued that the present case must be adjudicated within the context of three recent Supreme Court decisions: Garner v. Board of Public Works
, 341 U.S. 716 (1951); Adler v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 485 (1952); and Gerende v. Board of Supervisors, 341 U.S. 56 (1951). In Garner, the high court rejected the loyalty oath adopted by the city of Los Angeles, California
, because it required that the individual have knowledge of all the organizations which might advocate the unlawful violent overthrow of the government. Since no individual could have such knowledge, the act was overturned as vague. The Garner court had remanded the case to the district court with the requirement that the individuals be permitted to take the oath, now that the oath had been interpreted. In Adler, the Court upheld the New York legislation, because the New York
courts had already interpreted the law to require that individuals have knowledge of the goals of the organization they belonged to. In Gerende, the Court upheld a Maryland
statute on grounds similar to those in Adler.
Justice Clark noted that the Oklahoma Supreme Court had refused to allow the applicants to take the loyalty oath, even though it had interpreted the oath anew. Additionally, the appellants had petitioned that court for a rehearing that would allow them to take the oath, and again the Oklahoma Supreme Court denied the request. The act, as interpreted by the Oklahoma Supreme Court (Clark concluded) was asserting that "the fact of membership alone disqualifies. If the rule be expressed as a presumption of disloyalty, it is a conclusive one."
The Oklahoma act could not withstand constitutional scrutiny in that case, Clark wrote. "But membership may be innocent. A state servant may have joined a proscribed organization unaware of its activities and purposes. In recent years, many completely loyal persons have severed organizational ties after learning for the first time of the character of groups to which they had belonged." "Indiscriminate classification of innocent with knowing activity must fall as an assertion of arbitrary power. The oath offends due process."
Clark next dealt with the doctrine of privilege. (This legal doctrine concluded that public employment was a privilege, not a right, and subsequently significant restrictions could be placed on public employees that could not be constitutionally tolerated in the private sector.) Both the Adler Court and the majority in United Public Workers v. Mitchell
, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), had upheld statutes on the basis of the doctrine of privilege. Clark distinguished United Public Workers, however, by noting that political corruption was practically a unique case. Additionally, neither Adler nor United Public Workers permitted "patently arbitrary or discriminatory" application of the law (as occurred under the Oklahoma loyalty statute).
Based on these grounds, the majority reversed the Oklahoma Supreme Court and remanded the case. Clark refused to decide the case on other grounds, such as whether the Attorney General had given fair notice to affected organizations, or the differing standards employed in the preparation of the list.
concurred, joined by Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter
. He also provided a strong defense of free speech:
. Frankfurter's concurrence provided a ringing defense of the special role teachers play in a democracy:
concurred, but did not provide a written statement of his concurrence.
By the middle of the 20th century, however, the doctrine of privilege had been markedly weakened. Abuse of the privilege had led to widespread corruption; the tolerance of sexual harassment
, racism, religious discrimination
, and gender discrimination; and workplace abuse (such as forcing employees to buy goods and services from a supervisor, or forcing employees to run errands for the supervisor). The courts were becoming less and less tolerant of the doctrine of privilege.
United Public Workers v. Mitchell marked the end of the doctrine of privilege. The Supreme Court openly rejected the doctrine in Weiman v. Updegraff, and a number of high court decisions in areas such as nonpartisan
speech, due process
, search and seizure
, the right to marry
, the right to bear children, equal protection
, education, and receipt of public benefits over the next two decades continued to undermine the doctrine. Although the Supreme Court later reaffirmed United Public Workers in 1973 in United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers
, 413 U.S. 548 (1973), it did so on the very narrow grounds that permitting public employees to engage in political activity encouraged corruption.
Case citation
Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...
(1952), is a unanimous ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that Oklahoma loyalty oath
Loyalty oath
A loyalty oath is an oath of loyalty to an organization, institution, or state of which an individual is a member.In this context, a loyalty oath is distinct from pledge or oath of allegiance...
legislation violated the due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
because it did not give individuals the opportunity to abjure membership in subversive organizations. Due process requires that individuals have scienter
Scienter
Scienter is a legal term that refers to intent or knowledge of wrongdoing. This means that an offending party has knowledge of the "wrongness" of an act or event prior to committing it. For example, if a man sells a car to his friend with brakes that do not work, and he does not know about the...
(knowledge that their membership or support violates the loyalty oath), and the Oklahoma statute did not accommodate this requirement.
Background
In 1950, the state of OklahomaOklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
enacted legislation requiring all state officers and employees to take an oath pledging loyalty to the United States of America, affirming that they did not advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and denying direct or indirect involvement with or support of any "agency, party, organization, association, or group whatever which has been officially determined by the United States Attorney General or other authorized agency of the United States to be a communist front or subversive organization".
Several faculty and staff at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College
Oklahoma State University–Stillwater
Oklahoma State University–Stillwater is a land-grant, sun-grant, coeducational public research university located in Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA. OSU was founded in 1890 under the Morrill Act...
refused to take the oath within the required 30 days after employment. Paul W. Updegraff, an Oklahoma citizen, sued in the District Court of Oklahoma County to prevent the state from paying these individuals their salaries. The faculty and staff members asked to intervene in the suit, and were permitted to do so. They argued that the Act was a bill of attainder
Bill of attainder
A bill of attainder is an act of a legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a judicial trial.-English law:...
; an ex post facto law
Ex post facto law
An ex post facto law or retroactive law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences of actions committed or relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law...
; made it impossible for them to fulfill their contracts with the state; and violated the due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
.
The district court upheld the Act. The faculty and staff appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court
Oklahoma Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of Oklahoma is one of the two highest judicial bodies in the U.S. state of Oklahoma and leads the Oklahoma Court System, the judicial branch of the government of Oklahoma....
. The Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld the Act. The faculty and staff appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari
Certiorari
Certiorari is a type of writ seeking judicial review, recognized in U.S., Roman, English, Philippine, and other law. Certiorari is the present passive infinitive of the Latin certiorare...
.
Majority opinion
Associate Justice Tom C. ClarkTom C. Clark
Thomas Campbell Clark was United States Attorney General from 1945 to 1949 and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States .- Early life and career :...
wrote the opinion for the majority.
Clark accepted the Oklahoma Supreme Court's interpretation that the Act only proscribed membership in and support for those organizations listed on the U.S. Attorney General's list as of the date of enactment. Organizations not on that list, even if communist, were required to be abjurred.
Clark argued that the present case must be adjudicated within the context of three recent Supreme Court decisions: Garner v. Board of Public Works
Garner v. Board of Public Works
Garner v. Board of Public Works, 341 U.S. 716 , is a unanimous ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that a municipal loyalty oath which required an oath and affidavit about one's beliefs and actions for the previous five years and which was enacted more than five years previous is...
, 341 U.S. 716 (1951); Adler v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 485 (1952); and Gerende v. Board of Supervisors, 341 U.S. 56 (1951). In Garner, the high court rejected the loyalty oath adopted by the city of Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, because it required that the individual have knowledge of all the organizations which might advocate the unlawful violent overthrow of the government. Since no individual could have such knowledge, the act was overturned as vague. The Garner court had remanded the case to the district court with the requirement that the individuals be permitted to take the oath, now that the oath had been interpreted. In Adler, the Court upheld the New York legislation, because the New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
courts had already interpreted the law to require that individuals have knowledge of the goals of the organization they belonged to. In Gerende, the Court upheld a Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
statute on grounds similar to those in Adler.
Justice Clark noted that the Oklahoma Supreme Court had refused to allow the applicants to take the loyalty oath, even though it had interpreted the oath anew. Additionally, the appellants had petitioned that court for a rehearing that would allow them to take the oath, and again the Oklahoma Supreme Court denied the request. The act, as interpreted by the Oklahoma Supreme Court (Clark concluded) was asserting that "the fact of membership alone disqualifies. If the rule be expressed as a presumption of disloyalty, it is a conclusive one."
The Oklahoma act could not withstand constitutional scrutiny in that case, Clark wrote. "But membership may be innocent. A state servant may have joined a proscribed organization unaware of its activities and purposes. In recent years, many completely loyal persons have severed organizational ties after learning for the first time of the character of groups to which they had belonged." "Indiscriminate classification of innocent with knowing activity must fall as an assertion of arbitrary power. The oath offends due process."
Clark next dealt with the doctrine of privilege. (This legal doctrine concluded that public employment was a privilege, not a right, and subsequently significant restrictions could be placed on public employees that could not be constitutionally tolerated in the private sector.) Both the Adler Court and the majority in United Public Workers v. Mitchell
United Public Workers v. Mitchell
United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 , is a 4-to-3 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Hatch Act of 1939, as amended in 1940, does not violate the First, Fifth, Ninth, or Tenth amendments to U.S...
, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), had upheld statutes on the basis of the doctrine of privilege. Clark distinguished United Public Workers, however, by noting that political corruption was practically a unique case. Additionally, neither Adler nor United Public Workers permitted "patently arbitrary or discriminatory" application of the law (as occurred under the Oklahoma loyalty statute).
Based on these grounds, the majority reversed the Oklahoma Supreme Court and remanded the case. Clark refused to decide the case on other grounds, such as whether the Attorney General had given fair notice to affected organizations, or the differing standards employed in the preparation of the list.
Black's concurrence
Associate Justice Hugo BlackHugo Black
Hugo Lafayette Black was an American politician and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, Black represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1927 to 1937, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 1971. Black was nominated to the Supreme...
concurred, joined by Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...
. He also provided a strong defense of free speech:
- History indicates that individual liberty is intermittently subjected to extraordinary perils. Even countries dedicated to government by the people are not free from such cyclical dangers. ... Test oaths are notorious tools of tyranny. When used to shackle the mind they are, or at least they should be, unspeakably odious to a free people. Test oaths are made still more dangerous when combined with bills of attainder which like this Oklahoma statute impose pains and penalties for past lawful associations and utterances. ... Governments need and have ample power to punish treasonable acts. But it does not follow that they must have a further power to punish thought and speech as distinguished from acts. Our own free society should never forget that laws which stigmatize and penalize thought and speech of the unorthodox have a way of reaching, ensnaring and silencing many more people than at first intended. We must have freedom of speech for all or we will in the long run have it for none but the cringing and the craven. And I cannot too often repeat my belief that the right to speak on matters of public concern must be wholly free or eventually be wholly lost.
Frankfurter's concurrence
Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter concurred, joined by Associate Justice William O. DouglasWilliam O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court...
. Frankfurter's concurrence provided a ringing defense of the special role teachers play in a democracy:
- The process of education has naturally enough been the basis of hope for the perdurance of our democracy on the part of all our great leaders, from Thomas Jefferson onwards. To regard teachers—in our entire educational system, from the primary grades to the university—as the priests of our democracy is therefore not to indulge in hyperbole. It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens, who, in turn, make possible an enlightened and effective public opinion. Teachers must fulfill their function by precept and practice, by the very atmosphere which they generate; they must be exemplars of open-mindedness and free inquiry. They cannot carry out their noble task if the conditions for the practice of a responsible and critical mind are denied to them.
Burton's concurrence
Associate Justice Harold Hitz BurtonHarold Hitz Burton
Harold Hitz Burton was an American politician and lawyer.He served as the 45th mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, as a U.S. Senator from Ohio, and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was known as a dispassionate jurist who prized equal justice under the law.-Biography:He...
concurred, but did not provide a written statement of his concurrence.
Assessment
In the 19th century, American courts had established the "doctrine of privilege."By the middle of the 20th century, however, the doctrine of privilege had been markedly weakened. Abuse of the privilege had led to widespread corruption; the tolerance of sexual harassment
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
, racism, religious discrimination
Religious discrimination
Religious discrimination is valuing or treating a person or group differently because of what they do or do not believe.A concept like that of 'religious discrimination' is necessary to take into account ambiguities of the term religious persecution. The infamous cases in which people have been...
, and gender discrimination; and workplace abuse (such as forcing employees to buy goods and services from a supervisor, or forcing employees to run errands for the supervisor). The courts were becoming less and less tolerant of the doctrine of privilege.
United Public Workers v. Mitchell marked the end of the doctrine of privilege. The Supreme Court openly rejected the doctrine in Weiman v. Updegraff, and a number of high court decisions in areas such as nonpartisan
Nonpartisan
In political science, nonpartisan denotes an election, event, organization or person in which there is no formally declared association with a political party affiliation....
speech, due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
, search and seizure
Search and seizure
Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime.Some countries have...
, the right to marry
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
, the right to bear children, equal protection
Equal Protection Clause
The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"...
, education, and receipt of public benefits over the next two decades continued to undermine the doctrine. Although the Supreme Court later reaffirmed United Public Workers in 1973 in United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers
United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers
United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers, 413 U.S. 548 , is a ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Hatch Act of 1939 does not violate the First Amendment, and its implementing regulations are not unconstitutionally vague and...
, 413 U.S. 548 (1973), it did so on the very narrow grounds that permitting public employees to engage in political activity encouraged corruption.