Court Opinion

ID: 9442448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:48:38.573992+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:28:13.112213
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Without trial by jury, without evidence, and without even being allowed to confront her accusers or to know their identity, a citizen of the United States has been found disloyal to the government of the United States.1
For her supposed disloyal thoughts she has been punished by dismissal from a wholly nonsensitive position in which her efficiency rating was high. The case received nation-wide publicity. Ostracism inevitably followed. A finding of disloyalty is closely akin to a finding of treason. The public hardly distinguishes between the two.
No charges were served on appellant. The chairman of the Regional Board said “Nobody has presented any charges.” The Board told appellant it was inquiring whether there were reasonable grounds for believing she was disloyal to the government of the United States. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had reported that informants believed to be reliable had made general statements purporting to connect her with the Communist Party. These reports were not disclosed to the appellant and have not been disclosed in court. The informants were not identified to the appellant or even to the Board. Their statements were admittedly not made under oath. The appellant denied under oath any membership in and any relationship or sympathy with the Communist Party, any activities connected with it or with communism, and any affiliation with any organization that advocated overthrow of the government of the United States. She asserted her loyalty to the government of the United States. She admitted attending one Communist meeting in 1932 in connection with a seminar study of the platforms of the various parties while she was a student at Bryn Mawr.
Appellant had no power to subpoena witnesses. Though it takes courage to appear as a voluntary defense witness in a loyaltj case, four appeared. One was the pastor of the Methodist church of which appellant is an active member. He testified: “When this charge or information came to me I was not only surprised, I was dumfounded. * * * People in our community and in our church think of her and her family in the highest terms.” Three officials of appellant’s government agency, the United States Employment Service, who had known appellant professionally and socially for years, testified respectively that they were “extremely shocked” by the suggestion of her being disloyal, that it was “inconceivable” and “out of reason”. Persons prominent in business, government and education who knew appellant but could not be present submitted affidavits.
No witness offered evidence, even hearsay evidence, against appellant. No affidavits were introduced against her. The record consists entirely of evidence in her favor. Yet the Board purported to find “on all the evidence” that there were reasonable grounds for believing she was disloyal to the government of the United States. Appellees admit the Board made this finding “after considering all the evidence, including the confidential reports *67of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The Board directed the Federal Security Agency to suspend appellant pending her appeal to the Loyalty Review Board, and told her she was barred from civil service examinations for three years.
Appellant appeared and testified before a panel of the Loyalty Review Board. She submitted her own affidavit and the affidavits of some 70 persons who knew her, including bankers, corporate officials, federal and state officials, union members, and others. Again no one testified against her. She proved she had publicly and to the knowledge of a number of the affiants taken positions inconsistent with Communist sympathies. She showed not only by her own testimony but by that of other persons that she favored the Marshall Plan, which the Communist Party notoriously opposed, and that in 1940, during the Nazi-Soviet Pact, she favored Lend-Lease and was very critical of the Soviet position. In her union she urged its officers to execute non-communist affidavits, opposed a foreign policy resolution widely publicized as pro-Russian, and favored what was then the official CIO resolution on foreign policy.
Against all this, there were only the unsworn reports in the secret files to the effect that unsworn statements of a general sort, purporting to connect appellant with Communism, had been made by unnamed persons. Some if not all of these statements did not purport to be based on knowledge, but only on belief. Appellant sought to learn the names of the informants or, if their names were confidential, then at least whether they had been active in appellant’s union, in which there were factional quarrels. The Board did not furnish or even have this information. Chairman Richardson said: “I haven’t the slightest knowledge as to who they were or how active they have been in anything.” All that the Board knew or we know about the informants 'is that unidentified members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who did not appear before the Board, believed them to be reliable. To quote again from the record: “Chairman Richardson: lean only say to you that five or six of the reports come from informants certified to us by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as experienced and entirely reliable.” “Mr. Seasongood: Here is a statement that it was ascertained you were a member of the Communist Party in the District of Columbia as early as 1935, and that in the early days of her Party membership she attended Communist Party meetings. * * * Here is another that says you were a member of the Communist Party, and he bases his statement on his knowledge of your association with known Communists for the past seven or eight years. That is part of the evidence that was submitted to us.” “Mr. Porter: Is it under oath ? Chairman Richardson: I don’t think so. Mr. Seasongood : It is a person of known responsibility who had proffered information concerning Communist activity in the District of Columbia. * * * Here is another one: ‘considers appointee a member of the Communist Party, and if not an actual member, one who is entirely controlled by the wishes of the Communist Leaders in the District of Columbia.’ ”
On such material, the Review Board sustained the action of the Regional Board and directed the Federal Security Agency to dismiss the appellant. Llowever respectable her anonymous accusers may have been, if her dismissal is sustained the livelihood and reputation of any civil servant today and perhaps of any American tomorrow are at the mercy not only of an innocently mistaken informer but also of a malicious or demented one unless his defect is apparent to the agent who interviews him.
Appellant’s dismissal violates both the Constitution and the Executive Order.2
*68I. Executive Order 9835 3 requires evidence and an opportunity for cross-examination. The Executive Order provides that “The standard for the refusal of employment or the removal from employment in an executive department or agency on grounds relating to loyalty shall be that, on all the evidence, reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the Government of the United States.”4 Despite the plain words “all the evidence”,, the court rules that the Order requires no evidence and authorizes findings based on unsworn confidential reports of unsworn statements of anonymous informants as to their beliefs concerning an employee’s affiliations. I think the Order does no such thing.
The court derives its paradoxical conclusion from premises that do not support it. The court .points out that the Order and a supplementary order require the names of confidential informants, and reports of the proceedings, to be kept confidential. But no order requires the Board to consider only confidential information. To say that confidential informants shall not be disclosed is not to say that willing government witnesses shall not be heard or that findings may be made without evidence. Neither is the prohibition against publication of reports a prohibition against hearing witnesses. On the contrary, Executive Order 9835 expressly authorizes testimony by witnesses for the accused employee.5 If anything so unprecedented as a prohibition of testimony by witnesses for the government had been intended it would have been plainly expressed. Unsworn anonymous statements may be used and useful as leads to evidfence but not as substitutes for evidence.
The requirement of the Order that findings be based on evidence is not merely uncontradicted by the context. It is confirmed by the context. The preamble of the Order says that both the United States and the accused employee must be afforded “maximum protection.” 6 Such protection plainly includes an opportunity to introduce witnesses and to cross-examine opposing witnesses. Even the minimum standards of fairness that are known as due process of law include as much. Hardly any protection at all is possible against vague assertions of unseen and unknown persons. The accused employee can only deny such assertions and prove, as the appellant did, that they are inconsistent with her reputation and with some of her acts. She can prove no specific contradictions, no, mistaken identities, and no alibis, for she cannot discover just when and where she is supposed to have done or said anything. However prejudiced, mistaken, untruthful, delinquent, or defective her accusers might prove to be if they could be cross-examined, an unidentified agent’s recorded belief in the reliability of their reports and inferences must go unchallenged. “The many possible deficiencies, suppressions, sources of error and untrustworthiness, which lie underneath the bare untested assertion of a witness, may be best brought to light and exposed by the test of Cross-examination * * * It is beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.” 7
Moreover the Order provides that “an officer or employee who is charged with being disloyal shall have a right to an administrative hearing * * 8 Particularly in the light of the guarantee of maximum protection, this must mean a full administrative hearing. Even a normal administrative hearing, to say nothing of one that affords maximum protection, includes the right of confrontation and cross-examination and the requirement that findings *69be based on evidence. Evidence has been required in administrative hearings even where, as here, the substantive matter at stake may be considered a privilege rather than a right. Aliens are entitled to a fair hearing in deportation proceedings, and this despite the fact that “there is no express requirement for any hearing or adjudication in the statute authorizing deportation.” 9 Even in deportation proceedings against aliens charged with advocating, or with membership in organizations advocating, overthrow of the government by force, evidence is required. The Supreme Court has said in such cases: “If the hearing was fair, if there was evidence to support the finding of the Secretary, and if no error of law was committed, the ruling of the Department must stand and cannot be corrected in judicial proceedings. If, on the other hand, one of the elements mentioned is lacking, the proceeding is void and must be set aside.”10 “The ultimate question presented by this record * * * is whether the warrant of deportation was supported by any evidence that the alien when he entered the United States advocated opposition to all organized government or the overthrow of the United States government by force and violence * * 11 “Though deportation is not technically a criminal proceeding, it visits a great hardship on the individual and deprives him of the right to stay and live and work in this land of freedom. * * * Meticulous care must be exercised lest the procedure by which he is deprived of that liberty not meet the essential standards of fairness.”12 It follows that even if the Executive Order did not expressly require findings based on evidence, or promise maximum protection, the administrative hearing which the Order guarantees to the employee whose job and reputation are at stake would still require evidence and an opportunity for cross-examination. As the Supreme Court has said, “manifestly there is no hearing when the party does not know what evidence is offered or considered, and is not given an opportunity to test, explain, or refute.” 13
No doubt cases arise in which investigation of an employee produces only anonymous accusations. The Executive Order elects to preserve their anonymity. No one questions the validity of that election. But its effect is that the employee must be cleared or the proceedings dropped.14 The Executive Order does not, and could not constitutionally, provide that he may be found disloyal without evidence.
II. Dismissal for disloyalty is pumishment and requires all the safeguards of a judicial trial. Most dismissals, including among others dismissals for colorless or undisclosed reasons and dismissals for incompetence, are plainly not punitive. They do not require a judicial trial or even a full administrative hearing. They are within the authority of the executive. Likewise most tax laws are within the authority of the legislature. It does not follows that all legislative taxation is constitutional or that all executive dismissals are constitutional.
Punishment is infliction of harm, usually for wrong conduct but in appellant’s case for wrong views. Dismissals to provide jobs for persons of certain affiliations, whatever else may be said of such dismissals, are not punitive. But dismissals for disloyal views are punitive. This is what the Supreme Court squarely held in the Lovett case.15 It overruled no cases in so holding. The earlier decisions of the Supreme Court *70on which this court relies are irrelevant because they involved dismissals for undisclosed reasons, not for disloyal views.
' The question whether the rule of the Lovett case extends to dismissals of “disloyal” persons from sensitive positions in which their presence might threaten substantial harm to the government does not arise in the present case and I express no opinion on it. Appellant was dismissed from a nonsensitive position. She was a staff training officer in the United States Employment Service. In the case of such an officer, no way is apparent and none has been suggested in which “suspicion of disloyalty indicates a risk” to the security of the' United States. Appellant’s dismissal for wrong thoughts has nothing to do with protecting the security of the United States.
Congress attempted to dismiss Lovett and two others from their government positions as of November 15, 1943, because of their supposed disloyal views. Their agencies kept them at work on their jobs for varying periods after November 15 but discontinued their salaries after that date. They sued for' and recovered salaries for their post-November 15 work. The Supreme Court held that their dismissals for supposed disloyalty, “which stigmatized their reputation and seriously impaired their chance to earn a living,” 16 were equivalent to punishment for crime and therefore could 'not be imposed by Congress or without judicial trial. The validity of an incidental attempt of Congress to make them ineligible for possible future appointments was not the question before the Court. They did not ask for, and it does not even appear that they would have been willing to accept, either reinstatement in their old positions or appointments to new positions. The Court said “This permanent proscription from any opportunity to serve the Government is punishment * * *.”17 But the question before the Court was whether the attempted dismissals were valid. This was the question the Court decided.
This court is deciding this case as if the Supreme Court had sustained the attempt of Congress to dismiss Lovett and the others, denied their claims to salaries^ and awarded them nothing but an assurance that they would be eligible for possible future appointments if they were ever offered any that they cared to accept. This court interprets the words of the Supreme Court regarding “permanent proscription” as contradicting and overruling the decision of the Supreme Court regarding dismissals. If the Court’s words had been inconsistent with its decision our duty would of course have been to follow the decision, not the words. But they were not inconsistent. The dismissals that the Court held invalid were the immediate phase of the permanent proscription that the Court said was invalid.
The distinction this court draws between dismissal as punishment and ineligibility as punishment not only contradicts the Lovett case but has no basis in reason. Dismissal is more certainly damaging than ineligibility, for the necessary combination of vacancies, qualifications, and desire for public appointment may never occur again. A person dismissed as disloyal can obtain no normal employment, public or private. The President’s Committee on Civil Rights said in 1947: “It is a severe punishment to be discharged from the government for disloyalty, as the Supreme Court pointed out in 1946 in United States v. Lovett. * * * Loss of job and inability to obtain another one is a severe punishment to impose on any man.” 18 It makes no present or probable future difference to the appellant and it should make no difference to a court whether the appellant is told that she is separated from the civil service for life, for three years, or only for the moment. Whatever she is told, if her dismissal is sustained she will not be reemployed while the present climate of opinion continues.
Since dismissal from government service for disloyalty is punishment, due process of law requires that the accused employee be given all the safeguards of a judicial trial before it is imposed. The Supreme Court in the Lovett case did not stop with *71holding that Congress could not dismiss employees for disloyalty. It went on to say, with particular reference to this punishment: “Those who wrote our Constitution * * * intended to safeguard the people of this country from punishment without trial by duly constituted courts. * * * And even the courts to which this important function was entrusted were commanded to stay their hands until and unless certain tested safegttards were observed. An accused in court must be tried by an impartial jury, * * * he must be clearly informed of the charge against him, the law which he is charged with violating must have been passed before he committed the act charged, he must be confronted by the witnesses, against him * * * and even after conviction no cruel and unusual punishment can be inflicted upon him.” 19
Not only the basic right to judicial trial but every one of these basic safeguards, unless it foe the last, was violated here.20 (1) The appellant was not tried by a jury. (2) She was not clearly informed of the charge against her. This is true not only because there was no formal charge and, according to the Chairman of the Regional Board, no charge at all, but also because of the vagueness of the term “disloyal”. It is so indefinite that neither the Executive Order nor, as far as appears, the Loyalty Review Board has attempted to define it. It means different and sometimes opposite things to different people. Since section 9A of the Hatch Act21 forbids employment of members of an organization that advocates (and, by necessary implication, of persons who advocate) “the overthrow of our constitutional form of government in the United States,” the Executive Order is plainly meant to cover more ground, but how much more no one can say. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, very indefinite standards cannot foe used as a basis for punishment. (3) The appellant violated no law. (4) Even the Executive Order was issued after the activities from which her disloyalty is inferred took place, if they took place at all. (5) She was not confronted with any witnesses against her. (6) Forced idleness may well foe considered a cruel as well as unusual punishment. It has been considered more severe than forced labor.
Because certain officials should foe free from apprehension that personal harm to them may result from their official acts they cannot, as the court points out, be required to pay damages for their official errors. But that is irrelevant here. The present appellant asks compliance with the 'Constitution, not damages 16r its violation. “Under our constitutional system, certain rights are protected against governmental action and, if such rights are infringed by the actions of officers of the Government, * * the courts have the power to grant relief against those actions.”22
III. Appellant’s dismissal abridges freedom of speech and assembly,23 Mr. Justice Holmes’ famous statement, made in 1892 when he was a member of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, that “the petitioner may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman”24 is greatly oversimplified. “As pointed out in Frost v. Railroad Comm., 271 U.S. 583, 594, 46 S.Ct. 605, 607, 70 L.Ed. 1101 [47 A.L.R. 457], even in the granting of a privilege, the state ‘may not impose conditions which require the relinquishment of consti*72tutional rights. * * * ’ ” 25 including the rights of free speech, press, and assembly. In the Esquire case the Supreme Court said: “We may assume that Congress * * * need not open second-class mail to publications of all types. * * * But grave constitutional questions are immediately raised once it is said that the use of the mails is a privilege which may be extended or withheld on any grounds whatsoever. See the dissents of Mr. Justice Brandéis and Mr. Justice Holmes in Milwaukee Publishing Co. v. Burleson, 255 U.S. 407, 421-423, 430-432, 437-438 [41 S.Ct. 352, 65 L.Ed. 704], Under that view the second-class rate could be granted on condition that certain economic or political ideas not be disseminat-ed.” 26 Similarly, the premise that government employment is a privilege does not support the conclusion that it may be granted on condition that certain economic or political ideas not be entertained. Though members of minority parties have often been dismissed, in the past, to make room for members of a party in power, any comprehensive practice of that sort would today be unthinkable as well as illegal, and the Supreme Court has plainly indicated it would also be unconstitutional. The Court pointed out in the Mitchell case that Congress could not “ ‘enact a regulation providing that no Republican, Jew or Negro shall be appointed to federal office, or that no federal employee shall attend Mass or take any active part in missionary work.’ ” 27
The dismissal which the Court upheld in the Mitchell case was not based on views' but on conduct. The Hatch Act sought to restrain civil servants, regardless of their views, 'from devoting more than a limited amount of energy to politics. The Court held that “For regulation of employees it is not necessary that the act regulated be anything more than an act reasonably deemed by Congress to interfere with the efficiency of the public service.”28 Since the present appellant was not a policy-making officer, had no access to state secrets, and was not even in a sensitive agency, it is doubtful whether any political opinions of hers, however obnoxious, could reasonably be deemed to interfere with the efficiency of the service. But the question is, I think, immaterial here, for the “vague and indeterminate * * * boundaries”29 of the term “disloyal” have made the Executive Order as construed and applied a restraint on many opinions that certainly cannot be deemed to interfere with the efficiency of the service.
“In loyalty hearings the following questions have been asked of employees against whom charges have been brought. * * * ‘Do you read a good many books ?’ What books do you read?’ What magazines do you read?’ What newspapers do you buy or subscribe-to?’ ‘Do you think that Russian Communism is likely to succeed?’ ‘How do you explain the fact that you have an album of Paul Robeson records in your home?’ ‘Do you ever entertain Negroes in your home ?’ * * * ‘Is it not true * * * that you lived next door to and therefore were closely associated with a member of the I.W.W.?”’30 “Too often the line of questioning has revolved around conformity with prevailing mores in personal habits and personal opinion. * * * A woman employee was accused of disloyalty because, at the time of siege of Stalingrad, she collected money for Russian war relief (she also collected money for British *73and French relief).”31 A record filed m this court shows that an accused employee was taken to task for membership in Consumers Union and for favoring legislation against racial discrimination. The record in the present case contains the following colloquy between a member of the Regional Board and the present appellant: “Mr. Blair: Did you ever write a letter to the Red Cross about the segregation of blood? Miss Bailey: I do not recall. Mr. Blair: What was your personal position about that? Miss Bailey: Well, the medical — . Mr. Blair: I am asking yours.”32
N-o doubt some boards are quite aware that unconventional views and conduct have no tendency to indicate disloyalty. But the fact remains that some boards imagine the contrary. This fact is only too well known. It puts government employees under economic and social pressure to protect their jobs and reputations by expressing in words and conduct only the most orthodox opinions on political, economic, and social questions.
A regulation that restrains constitutionally protected speech along with other speech cannot be enforced against either. Legislation is unconstitutional as a whole if it “does not aim specifically at evils within the allowable area of state control, but * * * sweeps within its ambit other activities that in ordinary circumstances constitute an exercise of freedom of speech or of the press. The existence of such a statute * * * results in a continuous and pervasive restraint on all freedom of discussion that might reasonably he regarded as within its purview. * * * An accused * * * under such a statute, does not have to sustain the burden of demonstrating that the State could not constitutionally have written a different and specific statute covering his activities as disclosed by the charge and the evidence introduced against him. * * * Where regulations of the liberty of free discussion are concerned, there are special reasons for observing the rule that it is the statute, and not the accusation or the evidence under it, which prescribes the limits of permissible conduct and warns against transgression.”33
The Supreme Court has foreseen practically the case now before us. In holding a New York statute unconstitutional the Court said: “The present case as to a vague statute abridging free speech involves the circulation of only vulgar magazines. The next may call for decision as to free expression of political views in the light of a statute intended to punish subversive activities.”34
Freedoms that may not be abridged by law may not be abridged by executive order. Executive power to control public employment stands on no higher constitutional ground than legislative power to tax. The taxing power does not extend to sales of propaganda not made for profit; license taxes, though imposed for the legitimate purpose of raising revenue, are unconstitutional in their application to such sales.35 Such taxes, even if they are too small to be a “substantial clog”36 on the circulation of propaganda, are “on their face * * * a restriction of the free exercise of those freedoms which are protected by the First *74Amendment.”37 The loss of employment, reputation, and earning power here involved is on its face a very substantial clog on the free exercise of those protected freedoms. It is therefore more clearly unconstitutional than the taxes.
Appellant’s dismissal abridges not only freedom of speech but freedom of thought. Whatever disloyalty means in the present connection, it is not speech but a state of mind. The appellant was dismissed for thinking prohibited thoughts. A constitution that forbids speech control does not permit thought control.
Appellant’s dismissal attributes guilt by association, and thereby denies both the freedom of assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment and the due process of law guaranteed by the Fifth. The appellant was dismissed as disloyal because she was believed to be a member or associate of the Communist Party. Undoubtedly many such persons are disloyal in every sense to the government of the United States. But the Supreme Court has held that a particular member of the Communist Party may be “attached to the principles of the Constitution” within the meaning of those words in a naturalization act: “As Justice Holmes said, ‘Surely it cannot show lack of attachment to the principles of the Constitution that * * * [one] thinks it can be improved.’ * * * ‘If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.’.” “Under our traditions beliefs are personal and not a matter of mere association, and * * * men in adhering to a political party or other organization notoriously do not subscribe unqualifiedly to all of its platforms or asserted principles.”38 As was said more recently, “To condemn or to interdict all members of a named political party is an abridgement of free speech, press and assembly. The Communist Party in this country is recognized as a political party.”39
The court thinks Miss Bailey’s interest and the public interest conflict. I think they coincide. Since Miss Bailey’s dismissal from a nonsensitive job has nothing to do with protecting the security of the United States, the government’s right to preserve itself in the world as it is has nothing to do with this case. The ominous theory that the right of fair trial ends where defense of security begins is irrelevant.
On this record we have no sufficient reason to doubt Miss Bailey’s patriotism, or that her ability and experience were valuable to the government. We have no reason to suppose that an unpatriotic person in her job could do substantial harm of any kind. Whatever her actual thoughts may have been, to oust her as disloyal without trial is to pay too much for protection against any harm that could possibly be done in such a job. The cost is too great in morale and efficiency of government workers, in appeal of government employment to independent and inquiring minds, and in public confidence in democracy. But even if such dismissals strengthened the government instead of weakening it, they would still cost too much in constitutional rights. We cannot preserve our liberties by sacrificing them.

. The form of the finding against the appellant is that “reasonable grounds exist for belief” that she is disloyal to the government of the United States. The only important difference between this finding and a direct adjudication of disloyalty is that the former finding is easier to make. Once made, there is no practical difference. Executive Order 9835 recognizes this. In Part I, 2a it describes the form of finding prescribed in the Order and made here as an “ad- ‘ judication of disloyalty”; in Part Y, 2 as a “determination of disloyalty”.

. The Boards that dismissed the appellant are agencies of the Civil Service Commission. Before tlieir proceedings took place, the appellant had been reinstated in her permanent position in the classified civil service from which she had previously been separated by a reduction in force. Therefore both the Lloyd-BaFollette Act, 37 Stat. 555, § 6, 5 U.S.C.A. § 652, and the Executive Order, Part I, 1 and Part II, preclude the Civil Service Commission, or any *68administrative agency other than the one in which she worked, from interfering with her tenure.

. 12 Fed.Reg. 1935.

. Part V, 1.

. Part II, 2a.

. “Whereas maximum protection must be afforded the United States against infiltration of disloyal persons into the the ranks of its employees, and equal protection from unfounded accusations of disloyalty must be afforded the loyal employees' of the Government

. Wigmore, Evidence, §§ 1362, 1367, (3d ed. 1940).

. Part II, 2a.

. Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U.S. 33, 48, 70 S.Ct. 445, 453.

. Kessler v. Strecker, 307 U.S. 22, 34, 59 S.Ct. 694, 700, 83 L.Ed. 1082.

. United States ex rel. Vajtauer v. Com’r of Immigration, 273 U.S. 103, 106, 47 S.Ct. 302, 304, 71 L.Ed. 560.

. Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, 154, 65 S.Ct. 1443, 1452, 89 L.Ed. 2103.

. Interstate Commerce Commission v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad, Co., 227 U.S. 88, 93, 33 S.Ct. 185, 187, 57 L.Ed. 431. The Massachusetts Supreme Court has quoted this statement in reviewing the dismissal of a school principal by a board of education. Moran v. School Committee of Littleton, 317 Mass. 591, 594-595, 59 N.E.2d 279, 281.

. Cf. United States v. Grayson, 2 Cir., 166 F.2d 863, 870.

. United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303, 66 S.Ct. 1073, 90 L.Ed. 1252.

. 328 U.S. at page 314, 66 S.Ct. at page 1078.

. 328 U.S. at page 316, 66 S.Ct. at page 1079.

. To Secure These Rights, p. 51

. 328 U.S. at pages 317-318, 66 S.Ct at page 1079.

. The Supreme Court named additional safeguards, including the right to counsel, which I have omitted from the quotation because they were not violated here.

. 53 Stat. 1148, 5 U.S.C.A. 118j.

. Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U.S. 682, 704, 69 S.Ct. 1457, 1468.

. Read literally, the First Amendment forbids only Congress to abridge these freedoms, but as the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment extends the prohibition to all state action the due process clause of the Fifth must extend it to all federal action. Cf. United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75, 94-95, 67 S.Ct. 556, 91 L.Ed. 764.

. McAuliffe v. City of New Bedford, 155 Mass. 216, 220, 29 N.E. 517.

. Alston v. School Board of City of Norfolk, 4 Cir., 112 F.2d 932, 997. The court also cited Union Pac. R. Co. v. Public Service Comm., 248 U.S. 67, 69, 70, 39 S.Ct. 24, 63 L.Ed. 131, and Hanover Fire Ins. Co. v. Harding, 272 U.S. 494, 507, 47 S.Ct. 179, 71 L.Ed. 372, 49 A.L.R. 713. Cf. Western Union Tel. Co. v. Kansas, 216 U.S. 1, 30 S.Ct. 190, 54 L.Ed. 355; Terral v. Burke Construction Co., 257 U.S. 529, 42 S.Ct. 188, 66 L.Ed. 352, 21 A.L.R. 188.

. Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc., 327 U.S. 146, 155, 156, 66 S.Ct. 456, 461, 90 L.Ed. 588. .

. United Public Workers v. Mitcbell, 330 U.S. 75, 100, 67 S.Ct. 556, 569.

. Id. at 101, 67 S.Ct. at page 570.

. Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242, 264, 57 S.Ct. 732, 742, 81 L.Ed. 1066.

. Freedom vs. Security, by Robert E. Cushman, Goldwin Smith Professor of Government in Cornell University; in Physics Today, March 1949, pp. 14, 18.

. Editorial in The Washington Post, Feb. 6, 1949.

. Miss Bailey replied “I have no personal opinion.”

. Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 97-98, 68 S.Ct. 736, 742, 84 L.Ed. 1093.

. Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, 518, 68 S.Ct. 665, 671, 92 L.Ed. 840.

. Jones v. City of Opelika, 319 U.S. 103, 63 S.Ct. 890, 87 L.Ed. 1290; Murdock v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 63 S.Ct. 870, 87 L.Ed. 1292, 146 A.L.R. 81; Busey v. District of Columbia, 319 U.S. 579, 63 S.Ct. 1277, 87 L.Ed. 1598; Busey v. District of Columbia, 78 U.S.App.D.C. 189, 138 F.2d 592.

. Jones v. City of Opelika, 316 U.S. 584, 604, 62 S.Ct. 1231, 86 L.Ed. 1691, 141 A.L.R. 514. The dissent of Chief Justice Slone and the other dissents filed at the same time were afterwards adopted as opinions of the Court. Jones v. City of Opelika, 319 U.S. 103, 104, 63 S.Ct. 890, 87 L.Ed. 1290.

. Murdock v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 114, 63 S.Ct. 870, 875, 87 L.Ed. 1292, 146 A.L.R. 81.

. Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U.S. 118, 138, 136, 63 S.Ct. 1333, 1342, 1343, 87 L.Ed. 1796.

. Prettyman, Circuit Judge, dissenting, in National Maritime Union of America v. Herzog, D.C., 78 F.Supp. 146, 177, 178. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the court on other grounds, saying: “We do not find it necessary to reach or consider the validity of § 9 (h)” of the National Labor Relations Act as amended, 29 U.S.C.A. § 159(h), which requires non-Communist affidavits. National Maritime Union of America v. Herzog, 334 U.S. 854-855, 68 S.Ct. 1529, 92 L.Ed. 1776.