The Lloyd–La Follette Act of 1912 began the process of protecting civil servants in the United States from unwarranted or abusive removal by codifying "just cause" standards previously embodied in presidential orders.
§ 7511 The Act further states that "the right of employees ... to furnish information to either House of Congress, or to a committee or Member thereof, may not be interfered with or denied."
§ 7211 Under the leadership of Republican Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr.,[1] the United States Congress passed the Act with the intention of conferring job protection rights on federal employees they had not previously had.
James Tilghman Lloyd a Democratic congressman from Missouri, led the effort to pass the bill in the House of Representatives.
The act was passed after the Theodore Roosevelt (in 1902) and Taft (in 1909) administrations prohibited federal employees from communicating with Congress without authorization from their superiors.
It held that the Act's standard of employment protection, which describes as explicitly as is feasible in view of the wide variety of factual situations where employees' statements might justify dismissal for "cause" the conduct that is ground for removal, is not impermissibly vague or overbroad in regulating federal employees' speech.
[4] Congressional attention to the problem of politically-motivated removals was again prompted by the issuance of Executive Orders by Presidents Roosevelt and Taft that forbade federal employees to communicate directly with Congress without the permission of their supervisors.
These "gag orders," enforced by dismissal, were cited by several legislators as the reason for enacting the Lloyd–La Follette Act in 1912, 37 Stat.
555, § 6.FN20 That statute ... explicitly guaranteed that the right of civil servants "to furnish information to either House of Congress, or to any committee or member thereof, shall not be denied or interfered with."
A number of the bill's proponents asserted that the gag rule violated the First Amendment rights of civil servants.
In that respect good discipline and the efficiency of the service requires that they present their grievances through the proper administrative channels."
555.In 1997, the Justice Department argued that Congress does not have a constitutional right to obtain information from civil servants through unauthorized disclosures.
The conference report adopted the House version, and a government-wide prohibition has been included in every Treasury-Postal appropriations act since fiscal year 1998.
[7] In 2006, Rep. John Conyers included the Lloyd–La Follette Act in a list of 26 laws that he contends President George W. Bush violated.