Professor Fights Pennsylvania's Loyalty Oath for Candidates

Professor Gerald Massey, former chairman of the Philosophy Department at the University of Pittsburgh, is actively fighting Pennsylvania’s loyalty oath for candidates. Pennsylvania requires all candidates for state and local office to sign a statement affirming that they are not “subversive” persons. The statute does not define the term. Massey was elected to the Stoneboro, Pennsylvania city council as a write-in candidate last November. The law requires him to sign the oath before being sworn in, but he refused, and he was seated anyway. He has written letters to his legislators, asking them to introduce a bill to repeal the law. Such laws were held unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous 1974 decision, but legislatures in the six states that still have them are reluctant to repeal them.


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