578
Opinion of the Court
ple of that single individual, the President, should make a critical difference here.
We conclude that, insofar as the 1983 statute required then-sitting judges to join the Social Security system and pay Social Security taxes, that statute violates the Compensation Clause.
V
The second question presented is whether the
"constitutional violation ended when Congress increased the statutory salaries of federal judges by an amount greater than the amount [of the Social Security] taxes deducted from respondents' judicial salaries." Pet. for Cert. I.
The Government argues for an affirmative answer. It points to a statutory salary increase that all judges received in 1984. It says that this increase, subsequent to the imposition of Social Security taxes on judges' salaries, cured any earlier unconstitutional diminution of salaries in a lesser amount. Otherwise, if "Congress improperly reduced judges' salaries from $140,000" per year "to $130,000" per year, the judges would be able to collect the amount of the improper reduction, here $10,000, forever—even if Congress cured the improper reduction by raising salaries $20,000, to $150,000, a year later. Reply Brief for United States 18. To avoid this consequence, the Government argues, we should simply look to the fact of a later salary increase "whether or not one of Congress's purposes in increasing the salaries" was "to terminate the constitutional violation." Ibid.
But how could we always decide whether a later salary increase terminates a constitutional violation without examining the purpose of that increase? Imagine a violation that affected only a few. To accept the Government's position would leave those few at a permanent salary disadvantage. If, for example, Congress reduced the salaries of one group
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