Cite as: 532 U. S. 557 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
Medicare and Social Security taxes from a small number of federal judges who held office nearly 20 years ago—before Congress extended the taxes to federal employees in the early 1980's.
In our view, the Clause does not prevent Congress from imposing a "non-discriminatory tax laid generally" upon judges and other citizens, O'Malley v. Woodrough, 307 U. S. 277, 282 (1939), but it does prohibit taxation that singles out judges for specially unfavorable treatment. Consequently, unlike the Court of Appeals, we conclude that Congress may apply the Medicare tax—a nondiscriminatory tax—to then-sitting federal judges. The special retroactivity-related Social Security rules that Congress enacted in 1984, however, effectively singled out then-sitting federal judges for unfavorable treatment. Hence, like the Court of Appeals, we conclude that the Clause forbids the application of the Social Security tax to those judges.
I
A
The Medicare law before us is straightforward. In 1965, Congress created a Federal Medicare "hospital insurance" program and tied its financing to Social Security. See Social Security Amendments of 1965, 79 Stat. 291. The Medicare law required most American workers (whom Social Security covered) to pay an additional Medicare tax. But it did not require Federal Government employees (whom Social Security did not cover) to pay that tax. See 26 U. S. C. §§ 3121(b)(5), (6) (1982 ed.).
In 1982, Congress, believing that "[f]ederal workers should bear a more equitable share of the costs of financing the benefits to which many of them eventually became entitled," S. Rep. No. 97-494, pt. 1, p. 378 (1982), extended both Medicare eligibility and Medicare taxes to all currently employed federal employees as well as to all newly hired federal employees, Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982,
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