United States v. Treasury Employees, 513 U.S. 454, 20 (1995)

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Cite as: 513 U. S. 454 (1995)

Opinion of the Court

1278; 788 F. Supp., at 13.19 Congress reasonably could assume that payments of honoraria to judges or high-ranking officials in the Executive Branch might generate a similar appearance of improper influence. Congress could not, however, reasonably extend that assumption to all federal employees below grade GS-16, an immense class of workers with negligible power to confer favors on those who might pay to hear them speak or to read their articles. A federal employee, such as a supervisor of mechanics at the mint, might impair efficiency and morale by using political criteria to judge the performance of his or her staff. But one can envision scant harm, or appearance of harm, resulting from the same employee's accepting pay to lecture on the Quaker religion or to write dance reviews.

Although operational efficiency is undoubtedly a vital governmental interest, e. g., Rankin, 483 U. S., at 384, several features of the honoraria ban's text cast serious doubt on the Government's submission that Congress perceived honoraria as so threatening to the efficiency of the entire federal service as to render the ban a reasonable response to the threat. Cf. Waters, 511 U. S., at 677-678. The first is the rather strange parenthetical reference to "a series of appearances, speeches, or articles" that the 1991 amendment inserted in the definition of the term "honorarium." The amended definition excludes such a series from the prohibited category unless "the subject matter is directly related to the individual's official duties or the payment is made because of the individual's status with the Government." See supra, at 460. In other words, accepting pay for a series of articles is prohibited if, and only if, a nexus exists between the author's employment and either the subject matter of the expression or the iden-19 Portending this reliance, the primary discussion of honoraria in the 1989 Quadrennial Commission's Report appeared as a subtopic in the "Legislative Branch" section. Fairness for Our Public Servants: The Report of The 1989 Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries 24 (Dec. 1988).

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