No Loyalty Oath for Medicare
The Supreme Court on this day agreed that an anti-Communist loyalty oath in the Medicare program was unenforceable. The Justice Department had indicated that it would not enforce the law, following a Circuit Court of Appeals decision in California in November 1966. The Court ruled on an ACLU appeal without a hearing, leaving the lower court decision standing.
The short-lived loyalty oath for Medicare was one of the last (and possibly the very last) manifestation of the Cold War mania for anti-Communist loyalty oaths.
The insidious aspect of all the loyalty oaths of the Cold War era was that they had nothing to do with any specific criminal or unprofessional conduct on the part of individuals required to sign them.
Loyalty oaths were a special mania during the anti-Communist frenzy of the Cold War. Unlike traditional oaths of office, which involve an oath to uphold the Constitution and the law, Cold War loyalty oaths required people to swear that they were not members of the Communist Party and/or other radical parties or movements. Thus, they were oaths regarding membership and beliefs without reference to any actual or planned illegal action. See great controversy over the California loyalty oath for University of California faculty. See also the ludicrous loyalty oath for residents of federally-supported public housing. And see the loyalty oath for college students receiving support from the National Defense Education Act.
Learn more about loyalty oaths from the First Amendment Encyclopedia here
The “Sixties” really began in the mid-1950s and ended in the early 1970s. Read: Christopher B. Strain, The Long Sixties: America, 1955-1973 (2016)