Cite as: 527 U. S. 423 (1999)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
we should look in determining whether these suits were brought "for any act under color of office or in the performance of [official] duties."
Refusing to pay a tax, even an unconstitutional one, is not an action required by respondents' official duties, nor an action taken in the course of performing their official duties (as was, for example, the alleged physical abuse of an inmate by prison officials in Willingham, supra). Judges Acker and Clemon may well have been motivated by a desire to vindicate the interests of the Federal Judiciary. But their refusal to turn over money from their personal funds was not related to the responsibilities of their judicial office.
The opinion for the Court does not dispute this. Instead, it claims that holding the causation requirement unsatisfied would merge the merits issue with the removal issue. Ante, at 432. Since, the Court appears to reason, this fee might be unconstitutional if it is imposed upon the function of being a federal judge (the merits question), holding that these suits were not brought "for" their being federal judges would in effect decide the merits. That is illogical. What the fee is imposed upon, and what the suits are for are two different questions.1 If the cases were remanded to state court, respondents would remain free to argue that the burden of this exaction is upon the function of being a federal judge, rather than upon income. To be sure, the facts would be more favorable for that argument if the ordinance had been enforced by a different sort of suit, which would have qualified for removal—for example, suits seeking to en-1 Some confusion may have resulted from the fact that the Government argued this issue in a way that did conflate the merits with removal. See ante, at 432. It said that there was no causal connection because "[t]he tax . . . was imposed only upon [the judges] personally and not upon the United States or upon any instrumentality of the United States." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 20. As I explain above, however, proving who the fee was imposed upon does not answer the question of what the suit is for.
445
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