476
Opinion of the Court
The Government has not persuaded us that § 501(b) is a reasonable response to the posited harms.
We also attach significance to the OGE regulations that limit the coverage of the statutory terms "appearance, speech or article." 5 CFR § 2636.203 (1994). The regulations exclude a wide variety of performances and writings that would normally appear to have no nexus with an employee's job, such as sermons, fictional writings, and athletic competitions, see supra, at 460, countermanding the Commissions' recommendation that an even more inclusive honoraria ban would be appropriate. See supra, at 458. The exclusions, of course, make the task of the OGE and agency ethics officials somewhat easier, but they "diminish the credibility of the Government's rationale" that paying lower level employees for speech entirely unrelated to their work jeopardizes the efficiency of the entire federal service. City of Ladue, 512 U. S., at 52. We recognize our obligation to defer to considered congressional judgments about matters such as appearances of impropriety, but on the record of this case we must attach greater weight to the powerful and realistic presumption that the federal work force consists of dedicated and honorable civil servants. The exclusions in the OGE regulations are more consistent with that presumption than
volved isolated instances of speech that had already happened. See, e. g., Connick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138, 151-152 (1983). We deferred to the Government's predictions in upholding the Hatch Act, see Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U. S. 75, 100-101 (1947), but that statute's employee-protective rationale provided much stronger justification for a proscriptive rule than does the Government's interest in workplace efficiency. See supra, at 470-471. Deferring to the Government's speculation about the pernicious effects of thousands of articles and speeches yet to be written or delivered would encroach unacceptably on the First Amendment's protections. Cf. Federal Election Comm'n v. National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U. S. 480, 498 (1985) (statute restricting political contributions violated First Amendment where "exchange of political favors for uncoordinated expenditures remain[ed] a hypothetical possibility and nothing more").
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