Court Opinion

ID: 9425681
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:25.358951+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:56.934103
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
The federal bureaucracy controls a vast conglomerate of people who walk more and more submissively to the dictates of their superiors. Our federal employees have lost many important political rights. CSC v. Letter Carriers, 413 U. S. 548, held that they could be barred from taking "an active part in political management or in political campaigns,” a restriction that some of us thought to be unconstitutional, id., at. 595 et seq. (Douglas, J., dissenting). Today’s decision deprives them of other important First Amendment rights.
Heretofore, as my Brother Marshall has shown, we have insisted that before a vital stake of the individual in society is destroyed by government he be given a hearing, on the merits of the. government’s claim. Among these personal and vital stakes are welfare benefits, Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254; the weekly wage of a worker, Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U. S. 337; a person’s driver’s license, Bell v. Burson, 402 U. S. 535; repossession of household goods, Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67; the position of a tenured professor in a state educational institution, Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564; revocation of parole, Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471.
There is more than employment and a job at issue in this case. The stake of the federal employee is not only in a livelihood, but in his right to speak guaranteed by the First Amendment. He is charged with having stated that his superior and the superior’s assistant, had attempted to bribe a representative of a community action organization with whom the agency (OEO) had *204dealings. He is charged with having stated that those men offered a bribe of $100,000 in OEO funds to that organization if. its representative would sign a statement against appellee and another OEO employee. This statement in my view was on a subject in the public domain. We all know merely by living in Washington, D. C.,- the storms that have swept through that agency and its branches. It has dealt with inflammatory problems in the solution of which inflammatory utterances are often made. I realize that it is the tradition Of the Court to “balance” the right of free speech against other governmental interests and to sustain the First Amendment right only when the Court deems that in a givgn situation its importance outweighs competing. interests. That was the approach in Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U. S. 563, where the Court deemed what a teacher said against the school board was more important than the board’s sensibilities. ' The Court, however, reserved decision where the comments of an employee involved “either discipline by immediate superiors or' harmony among coworkers,” id., at 570. ' That is one reason why Mr. Justice Black and I concurred in the result citing, inter alia, our opinion in Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U. S. 374. Mr. Justice Black said that the “balancing” or “weighing” doctrine “plainly encourages and actually invites judges to choose for themselves between conflicting values, even where, .as in the First Amendment, the Founders made a choice of values, one of which is a free press. Though the- Constitution requires that judges swear to obey, and enforce it, it is not altogether strange that all judges are not always dead set against constitutional interpretations that expand their powers, and that when power is once claimed ■ by some, others are loath to give.it up,” id., at 399-400.
The fact that appellee in the present case inveighed *205against his superior is irrelevant. The matter on which he spoke was in the public domain. His speaking may well have aroused such animosity in his superior as to disqualify him from being in charge of disciplinary proceedings;1 and conceivably it could cause disharmony among workers. And these consequences are quite antagonistic to the image which agencies have built. Their dominant characteristic is. the application of Peter’s Inversion. See L. Peter & R. Hull, The Peter Principle 24-26 (Bantam ed. 1970). In a few words Peter’s Inversion marks the incompetent cadre’s interest in an employee’s input, not his output.2
His input reflects his attitude toward the cadre, and toward his work, A pleasant manner, promotion of staff harmony, servility to the cadre, and promptness, civility, and submissiveness are what count. The result is a *206great leveling of employees. They hear the beat of only one drum and march to it. These days employers have psychological tests by which they can separate the ingenious, offbeat character who may make trouble .from the more subservient, type. It is, of course, none of a court’s problem what thé employment policies may be.3 But once an employee speaks out on a public issue and is punished for it, we have a justiciable issue. Appellee is in my view being penalized by the Federal Government for exercising his right to speak out.' The excuse or pretense is an Act of Congress and an agency’s regulations promulgated under it in the teeth of the First Amendment: “Congress-sháll make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or. of the press . . . .” Losing one’s job with the Federal Government because of one’s discussion of an issue in the public domain is certainly an abridgment of speech.

A judge so reviled is normally not the one to sit in judgment in a criminal contempt proceeding. Mayberry v. Pennsylvania, 400 U. S. 455. Cf. Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254, 271.

 “The competence of an employee is determined not by outsiders but by his superior in the hierarchy. If the superior is still at a level of competence, he may evaluate his subordinates in terms of the performance of useful work — for example, the applying of medical services of information, the production of sausages or table legs or achieving whatever are the stated aims of the hierarchy. That is to say, he evaluates output.
"But if the superior has reached his level of incompetence, he will probably rate his subordinates in-terms of institutional values; he will see competence as the behavior that supports the rules, rituals and forms of the status quo. Promptness, neatness, courtesy to superiors,-internal paperwork, will be highly regarded. In short, such an official evaluates input . . .
“In such instances, internal consistency is valued more highly than efficient service: this is Peter’s Inversion. A professional automaton may also be termed a ‘Peter’s Invert.’ He has inverted the means-end relationship.” L. Peter & R. Hull, The Peter Principle 25 (Bantam ed. 1970).

 Apart from discrimination based on race, Griggs v. Duke Power Co.; 401 U. S. 424, or on other suspect classifications such as sex. See id., at 436; 42 U. S. C. §2000e-2; Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677, 682 et seq.