Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183 (1952), is a unanimous ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that Oklahoma loyalty oath legislation violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution because it did not give individuals the opportunity to abjure membership in subversive organizations.

[1] Several faculty and staff at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College refused to take the oath within the required 30 days after employment.

[4] In Garner, the high court rejected the loyalty oath adopted by the city of Los Angeles, California, because it required that the individual have knowledge of all the organizations which might advocate the unlawful violent overthrow of the government.

In recent years, many completely loyal persons have severed organizational ties after learning for the first time of the character of groups to which they had belonged.

)[10] Both the Adler Court and the majority in United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), had upheld statutes on the basis of the doctrine of privilege.

[11] Additionally, neither Adler nor United Public Workers permitted "patently arbitrary or discriminatory" application of the law (as occurred under the Oklahoma loyalty statute).

Clark refused to decide the case on other grounds, such as whether the Attorney General had given fair notice to affected organizations or the differing standards employed in the preparation of the list.

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 Supreme Court openly rejected the doctrine in Weiman v. Updegraff, 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 doctrine.