Broadrick v. Oklahoma

Earlier on the same day that the Court reviewed the case of Broadrick v. Oklahoma, it heard a similar case involving federal, rather than state, employees. In Civil Service Commission v. Letter Carriers, the law in question was Section 9(a) of the Hatch Act, which provides that no federal employee shall "use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election" or "take part in political management or in political campaigns." Evidently the Court did not consider this law "overbroad," because it upheld the Hatch Act by 6-3 vote.

In delivering the opinion of the Court in Broadrick, Justice White cited not only the Hatch Act, but laws similar to Section 818 which prevailed in all 49 of the other states. Thus he established that such provisions are relatively uniform, and that they are not ambiguous: "Without question," he said, "a broad range of political activities and conduct is proscribed by the section." He cited another proscription in Section 818, one which the appellants did not dispute, which prohibited discrimination against any state employee for his or her political beliefs--thus perhaps establishing a link between the prohibition of political discrimination on the one hand, and that of active campaigning and solicitation on the other.

In clarifying the case at hand, Justice White noted that the appellants did not consider the legitimacy of Section 818 as it applied to them, but were challenging it on the basis of its possible overbreadth and vagueness. White discounted this claim: "Whatever other problems there are with Section 818, it is all but frivolous to suggest that the section fails to give adequate warning of what activities it proscribes, or fails to set out `explicit standards' for those who must apply it." Though he conceded that "[w]ords inevitably contain germs of uncertainty," and that the prohibitions in Section 818 might not satisfy "those intent on finding fault at any cost," he affirmed that Section 818 was spelled out in terms clear enough for any person using ordinary common sense to understand.

White had little use for the appellants' claim that, even if the law was correct when applied to them, it could be misapplied to others. Implied in the traditions of constitutional interpretation, he said, is the idea that a person clearly guilty under a given statute cannot challenge that statute simply on the grounds that it might be misapplied to somebody else. "These principles," he said, "rest on more than the fussiness of judges. They reflect the conviction that, under our constitutional system, courts are not roving commissions assigned to pass judgment on the validity of the Nation's laws." There were limited exceptions, he said, especially instances in which those who are not parties to a suit stand to lose due to its outcome, as in the case of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama (1958). But Broadrick was not one of those instances, according to White, so he, along with Chief Justice Burger and Justices Blackmun, Powell, and Rehnquist, voted to affirm the decision of the district court.