In a country where the leader of the lefter of the two major political parties—President Barack Obama, a Democrat—self-admittedly acts like a moderate Republican of the 1980s, and virtually no radical leftists roam the halls of Congress, California still keeps its antenna up for any signs of untoward communist influence.
One area of eternal vigilance is in the state’s schools. California Education Code Section 44932 lists 11 things you can’t be or do and still teach. Two of the 11 are about communists. It’s hard to say if the 11 are listed in order of importance, but Number 1 is “immoral or unprofessional conduct,” followed by “commission, aiding, or advocating the commission of acts of criminal syndicalism.”
Those are a couple of heavyweight disqualifiers. “Knowing membership by the employee in the Communist Party” is way down the list at Number 10, behind “evident unfitness for service,” weird “physical or mental condition,” persistent violation of state school laws and a felony conviction. But being a communist slips in ahead of being a drunk or drug abuser.
Immediately ahead of Communist Party affiliation, in the Number 9 spot, is a reference to two other code sections about communists. Education Code Section 51530 forbids advocacy of communism by a teacher because it “is a political theory that, the presently existing form of government of the United States or of this state, should be changed, by force, violence, or other unconstitutional means, to a totalitarian dictatorship.”
The second reference in the Number 9 spot is Government Code Section 1028, a much broader prohibition against communists that includes all public employees. Following up on the preceding Government Code Section 1027.5, which is a lengthy statement of principles by the Legislature that asserts communism’s “great and imminent . . . clear and present danger,” Section 1028 makes membership in the party a fireable offense for any public employee.
The related Section 1028.1 compels all public employees to appear before committees that are ferreting out communists and testify honestly about any information they might have. Section 1028.1 makes a lot of references to knowledge that might pertain to events happening after 1945, the year World War II ended.
The state passed a pretty thorough loyalty oath for public employees in 1950 called the Levering Act that stopped just short of singling out the Communist Party by name for special attention, although its intention was clear. In 1967, the California Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision and pretty much gutted the oath, leaving it as a simple act of fealty to the state and nation.
Critics of laws, rules and regulations governing the behavior of communists in public life argue that they are anachronistic remnants of a bygone era. We had four decades of Cold War with communist enemies, which Wikipedia pronounced over in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Official government purging of communists peaked with the Army-McCarthy hearings in the early 1950s.
In 2008, the state Legislature passed Senate Bill 1322, which would have done away with loyalty oaths and exclusions of public employees on grounds of communist affiliations. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill after a conservative uproar.
California has a long history of anti-communist statutory activity dating back to the turn of the last century. In 1919, just after World War I concluded and communists came to power in Russia, the state passed a law making it illegal to display a red flag.
Twelve years later, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in Stromberg v. California.
–Ken Broder
To Learn More:
California Law Keeps Communist Party Members from Teaching (by Beau Yarbrough, San Bernardino Sun)
The State Loyalty Oath: A Historical Perspective (by Monique Shay, Counsel for California State University at Fullerton)