Broadrick v. Oklahoma

Broadrick v. Oklahoma raised difficult First Amendment questions in its focus on the right of public employees to participate in politics. While the Constitution can hardly be construed to justify the use of public office to promote political ends, higher officials in the federal and lower governments belong to political parties, and daily function in the capacity of promoting their parties' ends. The case also marked the high point of the reaction to the concept of First Amendment "overbreadth" associated with the Court of former Chief Justice Earl Warren.

The appellants in Broadrick v. Oklahoma, all three of them Oklahoma state employees, were charged by the Oklahoma State Personnel Board for violation of Section 818 of the Oklahoma Merit System of Personnel Administration Act. The latter forbids employees of the state from soliciting funds or campaigning for, or belonging to, any political party except as a private citizen. The three appellants were charged for their active participation in the 1970 reelection campaign of Ray C. Jones, a state corporation commissioner--and their superior. On several occasions at the commission's Oil and Gas Conservation Division, they allegedly asked other corporation commission employees to take part in campaign work or to recommend others who might participate in the campaign. Two of the three were charged with soliciting campaign funds from commission employees, and one was charged with receiving and distributing campaign posters.

When the three appellants took their case to the Federal District Court of the Western District of Oklahoma, at issue were two clauses in Section 818. The first of these, in paragraph six, stated that "[n]o employee in the classified service . . . shall, directly or indirectly, solicit, receive, or in any manner be concerned in soliciting or receiving any assessment . . . or contribution for any political organization, candidacy or other political purpose." The second was in paragraph seven, which provided that no such employee "shall be a member of any national, state or local committee of a political party, or any officer or member of a committee of a partisan political club, or a candidate for nomination or election to any paid public office."

The law, the appellants charged, was overly broad in its application, and could be used to forbid constitutionally protected forms of free speech, such as the use of campaign buttons or bumper stickers. However, they did not dispute the constitutionality of the law as applied to their own circumstances, but only called into question its possible future application. The three-judge panel of the district court upheld the law, and the appellants took the case to the Supreme Court.