Reading Room Document

Application of the Hatch Act to Top Government Executives

This memo concluded that Congress intended to generally exempt all “policy-making officials” from the prohibitions of Section 9(a) of the Hatch Act, which prohibited officers and employees in the executive branch from participating in political activity. With this understanding, the memo construed the four categories of exempted officials enumerated in the Act to include (1) “[t]he President and Vice President of the United States,” (2) policy-making officials connected with the White House, including but not limited to those compensated directly from appropriations for “The White House Office,” (3) any head or assistant head of a department who is a policy-making official, and (4) presidential appointees who have Senate confirmation and who determine policies in “the Nation-wide administration of Federal issues.”

June 15, 1954