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California Governor Earl Warren, a relatively liberal Republican
and future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, was facing a
difficult reelection challenge in 1950, the height of the
McCarthy Era. With his conservative opponent making an issue of
alleged Communist influence in California, Warren proposed the
Levering Act, which required all state employees to take a
loyalty oath and swear that they were not members of the
Communist party. Warren's action appears surprising because only
seven months earlier he had denounced a move to require the
faculty of the University of California to sign loyalty oaths.
What changed? An election. With conservative Democrat James
Roosevelt making an issue of Communist infiltration, Warren
championed the act, even though his later writings show that he
knew full well it was a violation of th