498
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
ployees below grade GS-16. The theory underlying the Court's distinction—that federal employees below grade GS-16 have negligible power to confer favors on those who might pay to hear them speak or to read their articles—is seriously flawed. Tax examiners, bank examiners, enforcement officials, or any number of federal employees have substantial power to confer favors even though their compensation level is below grade GS-16.
Furthermore, we rejected the same distinction in Public Workers v. Mitchell:
"There is a suggestion that administrative workers may be barred, constitutionally, from political management and political campaigns while the industrial workers may not be barred, constitutionally, without an act 'narrowly and selectively drawn to define and punish the specific conduct.' . . . Congress has determined that the presence of government employees, whether industrial or administrative, in the ranks of political party workers is bad. Whatever differences there may be between administrative employees of the government and industrial workers in its employ are differences in detail so far as the constitutional power under review is concerned. Whether there are such differences and what weight to attach to them, are all matters of detail for Congress." 330 U. S., at 102.
Congress was not obliged to draw an infinitely filigreed statute to deal with every subtle distinction between various groups of employees. See Letter Carriers, 413 U. S., at 556; Mitchell, supra, at 99.
The Court dismisses the Hatch Act experience as irrelevant, because it aimed to protect employees' rights, notably their right to free expression, rather than to restrict those rights. Ante, at 471. This is, indeed, a strange characterization of § 9(a) of the Hatch Act. It prohibited officers
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