If the Court would not condition public employment based on a religious test, it should not therefore base employment on a political test (e.g., nonpartisanship). Douglas agreed with the District Court that a number of Supreme Court decisions since United Public Workers had called into question the Hatch Act's constitutionality. For Douglas, the majority's long discussion of the 1940 amendments boiled down to one thing: Congress had refused to delegate to the Civil Service Commission the authority to regulate First Amendment rights, and this fatally left the Act uninterpreted and thus unconstitutionally vague. Douglas would have struck down the Act as "self-imposed censorship imposed on many nervous people who live on narrow economic margins." Assessment In the 19th century, American courts had established the "doctrine of privilege." This legal doctrine concluded that public employment was a privilege, not a right, and subsequently significant restrictions could be placed on public employees that could not be constitutionally tolerated in the private sector. By the middle of the 20th century, however, the doctrine of privilege had been markedly weakened. Abuse of the privilege had led to widespread corruption; the tolerance of sexual harassment, racism, religious discrimination, and gender discrimination; and workplace abuse (such as forcing employees to buy goods and services from a supervisor, or forcing employees to run errands for the supervisor). The courts were becoming less and less tolerant of the doctrine of privilege. United Public Workers v. Mitchell was the last time the Supreme Court expansively applied the doctrine of privilege. The Supreme Court largely rejected the doctrine in Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183 (1952), and a number of high court decisions in areas such as nonpartisan speech, due process, search and seizure, the right to marry, the right to bear children, equal protection, education, and receipt of public benefits over the next two decades continued to undermine the concept. Although the Supreme Court reaffirmed United Public Workers v. Mitchell in United States Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers, it abandoned its reliance on the doctrine of privilege and did so narrowly on the grounds that permitting public employees to engage in political activity was dangerous to democracy. Footnotes Bibliography Menez, Joseph Francis; Vile, John R.; and Bartholomew, Paul Charles. Summaries of Leading Cases on the Constitution. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Moore, Wayne D. Constitutional Rights and Powers of the People. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton