Hatch Act

HATCH ACT

HATCH ACT (1939), as amended, regulates partisan political activities by U.S. civil servants. The Democratic senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico, protesting the political involvement of federal employees in primaries and general elections, sponsored the bill that became the Hatch Act in order to ban federal employees from participating actively in political campaigns or from using their positions to coerce voters.

The Pendleton Act of 1883 and several executive orders limited partisan political activity by career civil servants. But the number of federal government workers ballooned from 14,000 in 1883 to 560,000 in 1926, so that by the 1930s, conservative Democrats and Republicans feared that these restrictions were insufficient, and that civil servants might shape elections of presidents, senators, and representatives. Also, they believed that the administration of Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt was using relief monies to influence elections. New Deal liberals seeking renomination or attempting to unseat conservative Democrats in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania were accused of diverting Works Progress Administration funds to enhance their prospects at the polls. In January 1939, the Senate Campaign Expenditures Committee upheld those accusations.

Hatch complained that the Democratic National Committee was obtaining gifts from persons working for—and corporations having contracts with—the federal government, and that several relatives of rival New Mexico Democratic senator Dennis Chavez had coerced WPA officials. In January 1939, Hatch introduced legislation to neutralize the federal civil service. While permitting federal employees to vote, his measure prohibited the assessment or solicitation of funds from WPA employees or the removal of any personnel because of refusal to change political affiliation. Section 9 prevented federal officials and workers from using their position to interfere in presidential or congressional elections. Non-policymaking federal officials could not be removed for partisan reasons. Enforcement was left to department heads, with a one-thousand-dollar fine or one-year term of imprisonment for violators.

In April 1939 the Senate adopted his measure with little fanfare, but the House Judiciary Committee infuriated Hatch by deleting section 9. The full House, however, restored much of it in July. President Roosevelt, who privately harbored reservations about section 9, reluctantly signed the bill into law on 2 August. The Hatch Act magnified the influence of local bosses, rural legislators, and labor unions. The original measure, therefore, was broadened in 1940 to include 250,000 state employees paid wholly or partially from federal funds and to require the nonpayment and removal of violators. A 1950 amendment reduced the penalty to ninety days suspension without pay.

Hatch Act supporters considered a politically neutral civil service the best way to achieve an impartial government and protect federal workers from coercion or threats by superiors. They regarded a government employee's attempts to influence the votes of others as inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution and wanted to limit the growing influence of government employee unions.

In United Public Workers v. Mitchell (1947), the U.S. Supreme Court by a 4–3 vote upheld the constitutionality of the Hatch Act, stating that public employment was a privilege subject to reasonable conditions. The Commission on Political Activity of Government Personnel in 1966 recommended relaxing restrictions and penalties. A 1972 U.S. district court ruled that the Hatch Act was vague, overly broad, and contrary to the First Amendment, but the U.S. Supreme Court in June 1973 again upheld it.

Critics claimed that the Hatch Act denied millions of federal employees the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association and discouraged political participation among people who otherwise would be vigorous political activists. Democratic President Bill Clinton encouraged Congress to overhaul the Hatch Act, and. the Federal Employees Political Activities Act of 1993 permitted most federal civil servants to run for public office in nonpartisan elections, contribute money to political organizations, and campaign for or against candidates in partisan elections. Federal officials, however, were still barred from engaging in political activity while on duty, soliciting contributions from the general public, or running as candidates for office in partisan elections.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eccles, James R. The Hatch Act and the American Bureaucracy. New York: Vantage Press, 1981.

Ponessa, Jeanne. "The Hatch Act Rewrite." Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report (13 November 1993), 3146–3147.

Porter, David L. "Senator Carl Hatch and the Hatch Act of 1939." New Mexico Historical Review 47 (April 1973): 151–164.

———. Congress and the Waning of the New Deal. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1980.

David L. Porter

See also Campaign Financing and Resources ; Civil Service .