Hatch Job: D.C. Teacher Loses Post Over Run for Office

By Erik W. Robelen

Washington

If Tom Briggs taught school in Washington's Virginia or Maryland suburbs, he probably would still have a job.

But a little-known provision of federal law prohibits teachers in the District of Columbia from running for political office. And now Mr. Briggs, a social studies teacher at Dunbar Senior High School here who ran for the District of Columbia Council in 2000, has been sent notice that he would lose his job as of April 23.

Public school teachers in every state have long been exempt from the 62-year-old Hatch Act, the law that limits the political activities of certain government employees. But as part of revisions made to the law in 1993, teachers here lost that protection. Some suggest the change amounted to a technical error. If so,...