Court Opinion

ID: 9427604
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:19.437049+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.355918
License: Public Domain

Me. Chief Justice Burger,
with whom Mr. Justice Powell and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join,
dissenting.
I dissent because, for me, the case presents very grave questions of separation of powers, rather than Speech or Debate Clause issues, although the two have certain common roots. Congress could, of course, make Bivens-type remedies available to its staff employees — and to other congressional employees — but it has not done so. On the contrary, Congress has historically treated its employees differently from the arrangements for other Government employees. Historically, staffs of Members have been considered so intimately a part of the policymaking and political process that they are not subject to being selected, compensated, or tenured 'as others who serve the Government. The vulnerability of employment on congressional staffs derives not only from the hazards of elections but also from the imperative need for loyalty, confidentiality, and political compatibility — not simply to a political party, an institution, or an administration, but to the individual Member.
A Member of Congress has a right to expect that every person on his or her staff will give total loyalty to the political positions of the Member, total confidentiality, and total support. This may, on occasion, lead a Member to employ a *250particular person on a racial, ethnic, religious, or gender basis thought to be acceptable to the constituency represented, even though in other branches of Government — or in the private sector — such selection factors might be prohibited. This might lead a Member to decide that a particular staff position should be filled by a Catholic or a Presbyterian or a Mormon, a Mexican-American or an Oriental-American- — or a woman rather than a man. Presidents consciously select— and dispense with — their appointees on this basis and have done so since the beginning of the Republic. The very commission of a Presidential appointee defines the tenure as “during the pleasure of the President.”
Although Congress altered the ancient “spoils system” as to the Executive Branch and prescribed standards for some limited segments of the Judicial Branch, it has allowed its own Members, Presidents, and Judges to select their personal staffs without limit or restraint — in practical effect their tenure is “during the pleasure” of the Member.
At this level of Government — staff assistants of Members— long-accepted concepts of separation of powers dictate, for me, that until Congress legislates otherwise as to employment standards for its own staffs, judicial power in this area is circumscribed. The Court today encroaches on that barrier. Cf. Sinking-Fund Cases, 99 U. S. 700, 718 (1879).
In relation to his or her constituents, and in the performance of constitutionally defined functions, each Member of the House or Senate occupies a position in the Legislative Branch comparable to that of the President in the Executive Branch; and for the limited purposes of selecting personal staffs, their authority should be uninhibited except as Congress itself, or the Constitution, expressly provides otherwise.
The intimation that if Passman were still a Member of the House, a federal court could command him, on pain of contempt, to re-employ Davis represents an astonishing break with concepts of separate, coequal branches; I would categor*251ically reject the notion that courts have any such power in relation to the Congress.