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Supreme Court cases

The Taft–Hartley Act (enacted in 1947) sought to ban political strikes by Communist -dominated labour unions by requiring all elected labour leaders to take an oath that they were not and had never been members of the Communist Party USA, and that they did not advocate violent overthrow of the U.S. government. It also made it a crime for members of the Communist Party to serve on executive boards of labour unions. In American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (1950), the Supreme Court had said that the requirement for the oath was not a bill of attainder because: 1) anyone could avoid punishment by disavowing the Communist Party, and 2) it focused on a future act (overthrow of the government) and not a past one. Reflecting current fears, the Court commented in Douds on approving the specific focus on Communists by noting what a threat communism was. The Court had added an "escape clause" test to determining whether a law was a bill of attainder.