The case of Nostrand et al. v. Little et al., 1961, revolved around a Washington state law that allowed the dismissal of any public employee who was found to be a member or associate of an organization deemed subversive by the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB). The plaintiffs were professors at the University of Washington who had been dismissed under this law due to their refusal to sign loyalty oaths disavowing membership in such organizations. They argued that this violated their First Amendment rights and sought reinstatement and back pay. The Supreme Court ruled against them, upholding the constitutionality of the state's loyalty oath requirement for public employees. The court reasoned that states have broad power to set employment conditions for their workers, including requiring them not to belong to groups advocating violent overthrow of government - which is what SACB-listed organizations allegedly did. It also held that since these dismissals didn't involve criminal penalties or bar from all future employment, they weren't punitive enough to violate constitutional protections against bills of attainder.

In the dissenting opinion for Nostrand et al. v. Little et al., Justice Douglas argued that the Washington statute in question, which allowed a person to be held in contempt of court for refusing to answer questions before a legislative committee, was unconstitutional. He believed it violated both freedom of speech and due process rights under the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment respectively. According to him, this law gave too much power to legislative committees by allowing them to punish individuals who refused to cooperate with their investigations without providing any safeguards against potential abuses of this authority. Furthermore, he pointed out that there were other less restrictive means available for compelling testimony from reluctant witnesses such as granting immunity from prosecution or holding them in contempt only after they had been given an opportunity to explain their refusal before a judge.