472
Opinion of the Court
The Government's underlying concern is that federal officers not misuse or appear to misuse power by accepting compensation for their unofficial and nonpolitical writing and speaking activities. This interest is undeniably powerful, but the Government cites no evidence of misconduct related to honoraria in the vast rank and file of federal employees below grade GS-16.18 Instead of a concern about the "cumulative effect" of a widespread practice that Congress deemed to "menace the integrity and the competency of the service," Mitchell, 330 U. S., at 103, the Government relies here on limited evidence of actual or apparent impropriety by legislators and high-level executives, together with the purported administrative costs of avoiding or detecting lower level employees' violations of established policies.
As both the District Court and the Court of Appeals noted, the Government has based its defense of the ban on abuses of honoraria by Members of Congress. 990 F. 2d, at
18 The Government cites a report of the General Accounting Office (GAO) to support its assertion that the ban is necessary to prevent widespread improprieties. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Federal Services, Post Office and Civil Service of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Employee Conduct Standards: Some Outside Activities Present Conflict-of-Interest Issues (Feb. 1992) (hereinafter GAO Report); see Brief for United States 22-23. The GAO Report found that ethics officials at several large agencies had approved 545 outside speaking activities between 1988 and 1990. GAO Report 8. Over one-third of the total approved activities dealt with subject matter, or involved duties, similar to the employees' Government work. Id., at 58. The GAO Report's conclusions and recommendations dealt exclusively with the problems of outside activities "that were focused specifically on the agencies' responsibilities and/or related directly to the employees' duties." Id., at 13-14. The GAO Report's examples of instances that gave rise to serious concerns about real or apparent impropriety were two cases in which high-level employees (a chemist and a physicist) engaged in consulting activities related to the subject matter of their jobs. Id., at 10. Its 112 pages contain not one mention of any real or apparent impropriety related to a lower level employee or to any employee engaged in writing or speaking or in any conduct unrelated to his or her Government job.
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