Cite as: 518 U. S. 668 (1996)
Scalia, J., dissenting
your job." LaFalce v. Houston, 712 F. 2d 292, 294 (CA7 1983).
Another factor that suggests we should stop this new enterprise at government employment is the much greater volume of litigation that its extension to the field of contracting entails. The government contracting decisions worth litigating about are much more numerous than the number of personnel hirings and firings in that category; and the litigation resources of contractors are infinitely more substantial than those of fired employees or rejected applicants. Anyone who has had even brief exposure to the intricacies of federal contracting law knows that a lawsuit is often used as a device to stay or frustrate the award of a contract to a competitor. See, e. g., Delta Data Systems Corp. v. Webster, 744 F. 2d 197 (CADC 1984); Delta Data Systems Corp. v. Webster, 755 F. 2d 938 (CADC 1985). What the Court's decisions today mean is that all government entities, no matter how small, are at risk of § 1983 lawsuits for violation of constitutional rights, unless they adopt (at great cost in money and efficiency) the detailed and cumbersome procedures that make a claim of political favoritism (and a § 1983 lawsuit) easily defended against.
The Court's opinion in O'Hare shrugs off this concern with the response that "[w]e have no reason to believe that governments cannot bear a like burden [to that in the employment context] in defending against suits alleging the denial of First Amendment freedoms to public contractors." Post, at 724. The burden is, as I have suggested, likely much greater than that in the employment context; and the relevant question (if one rejects history as the determinant) is not simply whether the governments "can bear" it, but whether the inconvenience of bearing it is outbalanced by the degree of abridgment of supposed First Amendment rights (of corporate shareholders, for the most part) that
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