This means that Staggs, who had submitted more than four times the necessary signatures, will appear on the November ballot.

The SWP campaign successfully challenged the state “loyalty oath,” and Staggs filed petitions crossing out the “anti-subversive” pledge.

This victory for political rights is getting publicity. An opinion column by Dimitri Vassilaros in the August 7 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, one of the main dailies in Pittsburgh, said, “By challenging the Pennsylvania loyalty oath—all political candidates in the commonwealth having to swear they are not subversives—the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has more respect for the rule of law than does the General Assembly.

“The Pennsylvania Loyalty Act was passed in 1951…. However, in Communist Party of Indiana v. Whitcomb (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the oath violated the First and Fourteenth amendments [of the U.S. constitution].

“And when the highest court in the land made its decision, the commonwealth immediately did nothing. Candidates still were required to swear they were not subversives….

“The Pennsylvania Socialist Workers campaign gave notice in July that it intended to challenge the oath. State Attorney General Tom Corbett rightly ordered the Department of State to discontinue using the loyalty oath.”

The SWP campaign has received messages of support.

“Congratulations to the Pennsylvania Socialist Workers, and their fine attorneys, successfully petitioning for an end to the use of an unconstitutional loyalty oath in our state,” Kathy Black, president of the Philadelphia Coalition of Labor Union Women, said in an August 2 message. Attorney Eric Lieberman of the constitutional rights law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky, and Lieberman, based in New York, represented the SWP campaign in challenging the loyalty oath. Noting that the oath was introduced “when people’s lives and livelihoods were destroyed by our government because of their political beliefs and associations,” Black added, “I am delighted to know this holdover from that shameful time has finally been struck down.”

“This is long overdue,” wrote Jim Savage, Grievance and Negotiation Chair of United Steelworkers Local 10-1 at the Philadelphia Sunoco refinery.

“This is a victory for the labor movement and all working people,” said Staggs. “It means anyone who wants to use the electoral arena to publicize and advance their struggles can do so, without facing a thought-control ‘loyalty’ test, a barrier to getting on the ballot.

“We are campaigning to advance support for workers’ struggles to organize unions and use them to defend themselves and other working people from the bosses’ attacks,” said Staggs, who is himself involved in a union-organizing drive at the meatpacking plant where he works. “We say not a single miner has to die. There is only one effective tool coal miners can use to ensure safety: a local of the United Mine Workers of America in every single mine.”
 
 
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Socialist Workers Party candidates in 2006  
 
 
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