United States v. Treasury Employees, 513 U.S. 454, 27 (1995)

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480

UNITED STATES v. TREASURY EMPLOYEES

Opinion of O'Connor, J.

Insofar as the judgment of the Court of Appeals affirms the injunction against enforcement of § 501(b) against respondents, it is affirmed; insofar as it grants relief to parties not before the Court, it is reversed. The case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice O'Connor, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.

Although I agree that aspects of the honoraria ban run afoul of the First Amendment, I write separately for two reasons. First, I wish to emphasize my understanding of how our precedents, beginning with Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U. S. 563 (1968), and culminating in its most recent application, Waters v. Churchill, 511 U. S. 661 (1994), direct the Court's conclusion. Second, I write to express my disagreement with the Court's remedy, which in my view paints with too broad a brush.

I

The time-tested Pickering balance, most recently applied in Waters, provides the governing framework for analysis of all manner of restrictions on speech by the government as employer. Under Pickering, the Court must balance "the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the [government], as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees." 391 U. S., at 568. In contrast to some of our prior decisions, this case presents no threshold question whether the speech is of public, or merely private, concern. Respondents challenge the ban as it applies to off-hour speech bearing no nexus to Government employment—speech that by definition does not relate to "internal office affairs" or the employee's status as an employee. Cf. Connick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138, 149 (1983).

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