Opinion ID: 294743
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: THE EXEMPTION OF 5 U.S.C. 1502(c)(4)

Text: 18 5 U.S.C. 1502(c)(4) exempts 'an individual holding elective office' from the coverage of 5 U.S.C. 1502(a)(3), discussed above. The appellants contend that Lightsey was 'holding (the) elective office' of Delegate to the Virginia House of Delegates when he campaigned for reelection in 1967, and was therefore not in violation of the Act. 19 The appellants' argument cannot withstand close scrutiny, for it depends upon reading the exemption out of the context in which it occurs, and requires us to ignore the legislative history of the Hatch Act. The Third Circuit considered precisely this question in In re Higginbotham, 340 F.2d 165, cert. denied, Higginbotham v. United States Civil Service Commission, 382 U.S. 853, 86 S.Ct. 101, 15 L.Ed.2d 91 (1965). In that case a local Democratic alderman, employed on a full time basis by a federally funded local housing authority, ran for reelection. He defended his candidacy on the same ground advanced by Lightsey in this case, namely, that he was exempt as an elective office-holder. The Third Circuit squarely rejected this interpretation of the exemption contained in 5 U.S.C. 1502(c), as do we. 20 The legislative purpose of the subsection was to exempt a small but important number of elected state officers and employees whose official duties in their elective positions involve the administration of federally assisted projects. Thus 5 U.S.C. 1502(c) exempts Governors, Lieutenant Governors, Mayors, elected heads of executive departments, and 'individual(s) holding elective office.' This last clause was designed to encompass a residual category of state officers, such as an elected state highway commissioner for example, whose elective position includes responsibility for federally funded programs. It was far from the purpose of the exemptive provision to tolerate political activity by an employee of an agency administering federal funds merely because he happens to have been elected to an entirely unrelated office. 21 Other sections of the Hatch Act confirm this interpretation of 5 U.S.C. 1502(c)(4). When the Hatch Act was originally adopted it contained a section 17 (later dropped in 1948 as obviously unnecessary) that allowed any employee covered by the Act, who had been nominated for any public office before the Act became law, to retain his position with the agency and continue to run for office, provided that if he were elected to the public office he would resign from the government agency. If the appellants' construction of the exemption were accepted, section 17 of the original Hatch Act would have been anomalous. Why would Congress have required the employee to resign, if 5 U.S.C. 1502(c) (4), as the appellants maintain, exempted the employee altogether from the prohibition against political activity? 22 The appellants' construction is also inconsistent with the legislative design of 5 U.S.C. 1503 which permits state employees subject to the Act to engage in nonpartisan political activity, and even to run for elective offices provided those offices and activities are strictly local in nature and completely unrelated to issues and candidates that are identified with national or state political parties. The prime example of such a permissible activity might be running for a nonpartisan local school board. According to the appellants' interpretation, such holders of nonpartisan elective offices would thereafter be free to take part in partisan political campaigns since they would be 'individual(s) holding elective office(s).' That result unquestionably would do violence to the congressional intent underlying 5 U.S.C. 1503 to allow government employees to participate only in nonpartisan local affairs. 23 For the reasons stated in this opinion, the judgment of the District Court is 24 Affirmed.