Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 31, 1993                   TAG: 9303310128
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

COURT OVERTURNS BAN ON FEDERAL WORKERS' FEES

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia called the total prohibition on outside fees for occasional speeches or magazine articles "unduly overinclusive" when applied to career civil service workers' speaking or writing about topics unrelated to their jobs.

"It is clear that the ban reaches a lot of compensation that has no nexus to government work that could give rise to the slightest concern," Circuit Judge Stephen F. Williams wrote in a 2-1 ruling by the three-judge panel.

He cited examples of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission lawyer who writes about czarist Russian history, a Labor Department lawyer who lectures on Judaism and a Navy electronics technician whose avocation is ironclad vessels in the Civil War.

"The topics appear not to be such that the employee could have used information acquired in the course of his government work," the majority said. And "there is no suggestion that the institutions that have paid or are likely to pay for the speeches or writings would have some relationship with the employee's agency that would make them wish to curry its favor."