482
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
of the nearly two million members of respondent class, it doubtless inhibits some speech on matters of substantial public interest. In my view, the impact of the honoraria ban upon this class of employees' interests in speaking out as citizens, rather than as employees, cannot be gainsaid.
The Government advances two categories of interests in support of the honoraria ban. First, the Government submits its interests in promoting the efficiency of public service and in avoiding the appearance of impropriety created by abuse of the practice of receiving honoraria. We have credited these objectives as both salutary and significant on several occasions. See, e. g., Federal Election Comm'n v. National Right to Work Comm., 459 U. S. 197, 210 (1982); First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 788, n. 26 (1978); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 26-29 (1976). Although they lend support to the Government's efforts to put a stop to honoraria paid for work-related speech, these interests have less force in justifying a ban that prohibits honoraria paid for speech on matters wholly unrelated to the work-place. Perhaps recognizing this, the Government maintains that it has an additional interest in resisting evasion of its rule and sparing administrative resources. According to the Government, apparently innocuous payments may be made for illicit purposes, and the difficulty inherent in distinguishing the innocuous from the illicit mandates a broad prophylactic ban.
Balancing is difficult to undertake unless one side of the scale is relatively insubstantial. The Government argues that the Court should defer broadly to its determination that the benefits of the ban outweigh its costs. The Government relies on Waters, in which a plurality of the Court observed that "we have consistently given greater deference to government predictions of harm used to justify restriction of employee speech than to predictions of harm used to justify restrictions on the speech of the public at large." 511 U. S., at 673. But this principle has its limits, as the Waters plu-
Page: Index Previous 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007