572
Opinion of the Court
The Government points out that the Medicare tax is just such a nondiscriminatory tax. Neither the courts below, nor the federal judges here, argue to the contrary. Hence, insofar as the Court of Appeals found that application of the Medicare tax law to federal judges is unconstitutional, we reverse its decision.
IV
The Social Security tax is a different matter. Respondents argue that the 1983 law imposing that tax upon then-sitting judges violates the Compensation Clause, for it discriminates against judges in a manner forbidden by the Clause, even as interpreted in O'Malley, not Evans. Cf. O'Malley, supra, at 282 (stating question as whether judges are immune "from the incidences of taxation to which everyone else within the defined classes . . . is subjected" (emphasis added)). After examining the statute's details, we agree with the judges that it does discriminate in a manner that the Clause forbids. Four features of the law, taken together, lead us to this conclusion.
First, federal employees had remained outside the Social Security system for nearly 50 years prior to the passage of the 1983 law. Congress enacted the law pursuant to the Social Security Commission's recommendation to bring those employees within the law. See supra, at 562. And the law itself deals primarily with that subject. Thus, history, context, statutory purpose, and statutory language, taken together, indicate that the category of "federal employees" is the appropriate class against which we must measure the asserted discrimination.
Second, the law, as applied in practice, in effect imposed a new financial obligation upon sitting judges, but it did not impose a new financial burden upon any other group of (then) current federal employees. We have previously explained why that is so. See supra, at 562-564. The law required all newly hired federal employees to join Social Security and pay related taxes. It gave 96% of all current employees
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