Cite as: 532 U. S. 557 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
(employed as of January 1, 1984, or earlier) total freedom to enter, or not to enter, the system as they chose. It gave the remaining 4% of all current employees the freedom to maintain their pre-1984 payroll deductions, provided that they were currently enrolled in a "covered" system. And it defined "covered" system in a way that included virtually all of that 4%, except for federal judges. See supra, at 563- 564. The practical upshot is that the law permitted nearly every current federal employee, but not federal judges, to avoid the newly imposed financial obligation.
Third, the law, by including sitting judges in the system, adversely affected most of them. Inclusion meant a requirement to pay a tax of about $2,000 per year, deducted from a monthly salary check. App. 49. At the same time, 95% of the then-active judges had already qualified for Social Security (due to private sector employment) before becoming judges. See id., at 115. And participation in Social Security as judges would benefit only a minority. See id., at 116- 119 (reviewing examples of individual judges and demonstrating that participation in Social Security primarily would benefit the minority of judges who had not worked the 40 quarters necessary to be fully insured). The new law imposed a substantial cost on federal judges with little or no expectation of substantial benefit for most of them.
Fourth, when measured against Compensation Clause objectives, the Government's justification for the statutory distinction (between judges, who do, and other federal employees, who do not, incur additional financial obligations) is unsound. The sole justification, according to the Government, is one of "equaliz[ing]" the retirement-related obligations that pre-1983 law imposed upon judges with the retirement-related obligations that pre-1983 law imposed upon other current high-level federal employees. Brief for United States 40. Thus the Government says that the new financial burden imposed upon judges was meant to make up for the fact that the judicial retirement system is basically
573
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