686
Scalia, J., dissenting
Subject to these limitations and caveats, however, we recognize the right of independent government contractors not to be terminated for exercising their First Amendment rights. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is, therefore, affirmed, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Scalia, with whom Justice Thomas joins, dissenting.*
Taken together, today's decisions in Board of Comm'rs, Wabaunsee Cty. v. Umbehr, ante, p. 668, and O'Hare Truck Service, Inc. v. City of Northlake, post, p. 712, demonstrate why this Court's Constitution-making process can be called "reasoned adjudication" only in the most formalistic sense.
I
Six years ago, by the barest of margins, the Court expanded Elrod v. Burns, 427 U. S. 347 (1976), and Branti v. Finkel, 445 U. S. 507 (1980), which had held that public employees cannot constitutionally be fired on the basis of their political affiliation, to establish the new rule that applicants for public employment cannot constitutionally be rejected on the basis of their political affiliation. Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U. S. 62 (1990). The four dissenters argued that "the desirability of patronage is a policy question to be decided by the people's representatives" and "a political question if there ever was one." Id., at 104, 114 (Scalia, J., dissenting). They were "convinced" that Elrod and Branti had been "wrongly decided," 497 U. S., at 114; indeed, that those cases were "not only wrong, not only recent, not only contradicted by a long prior tradition, but also . . . unworkable in practice" and therefore "should be overruled," id.,
*[This opinion applies also to No. 95-191, O'Hare Truck Service, Inc. v. City of Northlake, post, p. 712.]
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