9 ms·

An important detail: Comcast, backed by the local Chamber of Commerce, has threatened to sue the city over this law. On what basis? The corporation's Constituti

An important detail: Comcast, backed by the local Chamber of Commerce, has threatened to sue the city over this law. On what basis? The corporation's Constitutional First Amendment free speech right to ask the question: http://www.investopedia.com/news/comcast-threatens-sue-city-philadelphia/ http://www.investopedia.com/news/comcast-threatens-sue-city-... Are these the same free speech rights the Supreme Court recently bestowed on the corporations? I remember that at the time legal analysts said it would make it hard to regulate corporations. How can you regulate, for example, what goes in a prospectus issued to shareholders if the corporate has free speech rights?

Retric 10y ago
Free speech already has well known limits. Copywrite is an obvious one. Anyway, salary history's are discriminatory which seems like something that probably already has case law.
- icebraining 10y ago
  *Copyright Discrimination is, AFAIK, only illegal if it's against or impacts workers on the basis of a few specific issues (race, sex, pregnancy, etc). I don't see salary histories fitting the bill, do you?
  - Retric 10y ago
    Considering there is a well known gender bias in terms of salary's the connection seems very clear. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over...
- rhizome 10y ago
  Economic status is not a protected class.
  - pmiller2 10y ago
    Look up "disparate impact" sometime.
lend000 10y ago
Are all employers corporations? And even as such, this is just outlawing information. I do not understand how so many on the left support such a measure. It's a question -- outlawing questions, especially between private parties in a consensual relationship (applicant and employer), is backwards. You can choose not to answer it; you can lie; you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place, especially if they coerce you into providing records. This will just undermine the efforts of companies that have differentiated themselves with noninvasive hiring practices and set them back on the same playing field as less scrupulous employers. Why is free choice so difficult to understand?
- adidalal 10y ago
  Because
- tabeth 10y ago
  > You can choose not to answer it; you can lie; you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place, especially if they coerce you into providing records. >> you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place >>> you can choose not to work And here is the disconnect. Not everyone has the ability to simply "choose not to work...". Hence, laws. Your reasoning could be applied to simply working in general. After all, one can just choose not to work until they find a job that meets all of their criteria (salary, vacation time, commute, great people, great mission, etc). Unfortunately, life doesn't work like that.
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    The (typically salaried) people that get to negotiate their pay that this stuff affects do have those choices.
  - lend000 10y ago
    Not that I agree with the logical leaps here, but you skipped a step: > you can choose not to work for employers You don't have to work for any particular employer, and you also don't have to work for any employer at all. You can consult, contract, start a company, etc. But of course this is not necessary even if you're basing your entire career around avoiding that question, because it's not like every single employer asks it.
rayiner 10y ago
That's a red herring. You can hold individuals responsible for misleading statements in financial disclosures notwithstanding the fact that individuals indisputably have free speech rights. At the same time, if you can ban a corporation from asking the question about salary history, you should be able to ban a sole proprietorship or partnership from asking the question too.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > You can hold individuals responsible for misleading statements in financial disclosures notwithstanding the fact that individuals indisputably have free speech rights I'm not sure you can be effective if you do it reactively with lawsuits; who can afford to sue a Wall Street bank? You need regulations and rules. Also, the problem is not just misleading statements, but requiring that essential information is included, that it's expressed according to certain common standards, and that it's understandable to common people - not just to Wall Street bankers. There's a long history of selling bad deals to widows and orphans by confusing them. Currently you can't sell certain things to non-professionals; if they have free speech, can you stop them?
  - Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
    >who can afford to sue a Wall Street bank Probably investors or rich customers who get screwed by these statements or a band of normal folks in a class action lawsuit
  - icebraining 10y ago
    The State itself can sue the banks for those misleading statements, e.g.: https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/enf-actions-fc.shtml https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/enf-actions-fc.shtml
    - hackuser 10y ago
      Yes. The point is that corporations' new 'free speech rights' may interfere with that.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
BurningFrog 10y ago
Imagine if media corporations had free speech rights!
- intrasight 10y ago
  They do. When Fox was asked why they lie, their answer was basically free speech.
  - quickben 10y ago
    They are heavily vested in money guiding them in a given direction based on who likes them. On paper they are free speech, in reality, they are tightly bounded where they found themselves, and afraid to threaten the bottom line.
    - meanduck 10y ago
      Free Speech != Unbiased Speech. If state can forbid you speaking something, you dont have free speech. Money does not come into equation when we talk about free speech.
gigatexal 10y ago
One of the more out there free speech defenses no?
Eridrus 10y ago
Comcast's resistance makes it seem like this is a good idea, but I do wonder if this law will actually achieve anything. Employers will just low ball people, and those who have higher salaries will bargain more and bring up their salary, and people with low salaries will just accept the low ball...
breser 10y ago
I see a lot of people debating free speech rights. There's a simple solution to this. Don't write the law such that it's illegal to ask the question. Write the law such that it's illegal to use the information in hiring decisions or determining how much to pay. If the people involved with making those decisions have that information consider that prima facia proof that the information was used that way. Now they have their free speech rights. They can indeed ask the question. But parties responsible for certain things cannot have access to that information. Most reasonable companies will simply not bother to ask rather than jumping through the hoops to do so. But further most people won't have a reason to ask because the information can't be used for the normal reasons to ask.
andrewfong 10y ago
In this particular case, you would emphasize the distinction between speech and general commercial activity. Citizens United says you can't prohibit political speech just because it was via a corporate entity or paid for with a lot of money. But the actual case was about an anti-Hillary Clinton movie. And subsequent applications of the law have concerned things like campaign advertising (e.g. all things that look like traditional political speech). In this case, we're dealing with a condition of employment. Even if we consider it "speech", it's commercial, not political in nature, which courts could use to distinguish from the Citizens United precedent.

Retric 10y ago

Free speech already has well known limits. Copywrite is an obvious one. Anyway, salary history's are discriminatory which seems like something that probably already has case law.

icebraining 10y ago
*Copyright Discrimination is, AFAIK, only illegal if it's against or impacts workers on the basis of a few specific issues (race, sex, pregnancy, etc). I don't see salary histories fitting the bill, do you?
- Retric 10y ago
  Considering there is a well known gender bias in terms of salary's the connection seems very clear. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over...
rhizome 10y ago
Economic status is not a protected class.
- pmiller2 10y ago
  Look up "disparate impact" sometime.

lend000 10y ago

Are all employers corporations? And even as such, this is just outlawing information. I do not understand how so many on the left support such a measure. It's a question -- outlawing questions, especially between private parties in a consensual relationship (applicant and employer), is backwards. You can choose not to answer it; you can lie; you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place, especially if they coerce you into providing records. This will just undermine the efforts of companies that have differentiated themselves with noninvasive hiring practices and set them back on the same playing field as less scrupulous employers. Why is free choice so difficult to understand?

adidalal 10y ago
Because
tabeth 10y ago
> You can choose not to answer it; you can lie; you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place, especially if they coerce you into providing records. >> you can choose not to work for employers that ask the question in the first place >>> you can choose not to work And here is the disconnect. Not everyone has the ability to simply "choose not to work...". Hence, laws. Your reasoning could be applied to simply working in general. After all, one can just choose not to work until they find a job that meets all of their criteria (salary, vacation time, commute, great people, great mission, etc). Unfortunately, life doesn't work like that.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  The (typically salaried) people that get to negotiate their pay that this stuff affects do have those choices.
- lend000 10y ago
  Not that I agree with the logical leaps here, but you skipped a step: > you can choose not to work for employers You don't have to work for any particular employer, and you also don't have to work for any employer at all. You can consult, contract, start a company, etc. But of course this is not necessary even if you're basing your entire career around avoiding that question, because it's not like every single employer asks it.

rayiner 10y ago

That's a red herring. You can hold individuals responsible for misleading statements in financial disclosures notwithstanding the fact that individuals indisputably have free speech rights. At the same time, if you can ban a corporation from asking the question about salary history, you should be able to ban a sole proprietorship or partnership from asking the question too.

hackuser 10y ago
> You can hold individuals responsible for misleading statements in financial disclosures notwithstanding the fact that individuals indisputably have free speech rights I'm not sure you can be effective if you do it reactively with lawsuits; who can afford to sue a Wall Street bank? You need regulations and rules. Also, the problem is not just misleading statements, but requiring that essential information is included, that it's expressed according to certain common standards, and that it's understandable to common people - not just to Wall Street bankers. There's a long history of selling bad deals to widows and orphans by confusing them. Currently you can't sell certain things to non-professionals; if they have free speech, can you stop them?
- Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
  >who can afford to sue a Wall Street bank Probably investors or rich customers who get screwed by these statements or a band of normal folks in a class action lawsuit
- icebraining 10y ago
  The State itself can sue the banks for those misleading statements, e.g.: https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/enf-actions-fc.shtml https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/enf-actions-fc.shtml
  - hackuser 10y ago
    Yes. The point is that corporations' new 'free speech rights' may interfere with that.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

BurningFrog 10y ago

Imagine if media corporations had free speech rights!

intrasight 10y ago
They do. When Fox was asked why they lie, their answer was basically free speech.
- quickben 10y ago
  They are heavily vested in money guiding them in a given direction based on who likes them. On paper they are free speech, in reality, they are tightly bounded where they found themselves, and afraid to threaten the bottom line.
  - meanduck 10y ago
    Free Speech != Unbiased Speech. If state can forbid you speaking something, you dont have free speech. Money does not come into equation when we talk about free speech.

gigatexal 10y ago

One of the more out there free speech defenses no?

Eridrus 10y ago

Comcast's resistance makes it seem like this is a good idea, but I do wonder if this law will actually achieve anything. Employers will just low ball people, and those who have higher salaries will bargain more and bring up their salary, and people with low salaries will just accept the low ball...

breser 10y ago

I see a lot of people debating free speech rights. There's a simple solution to this. Don't write the law such that it's illegal to ask the question. Write the law such that it's illegal to use the information in hiring decisions or determining how much to pay. If the people involved with making those decisions have that information consider that prima facia proof that the information was used that way. Now they have their free speech rights. They can indeed ask the question. But parties responsible for certain things cannot have access to that information. Most reasonable companies will simply not bother to ask rather than jumping through the hoops to do so. But further most people won't have a reason to ask because the information can't be used for the normal reasons to ask.

andrewfong 10y ago

In this particular case, you would emphasize the distinction between speech and general commercial activity. Citizens United says you can't prohibit political speech just because it was via a corporate entity or paid for with a lot of money. But the actual case was about an anti-Hillary Clinton movie. And subsequent applications of the law have concerned things like campaign advertising (e.g. all things that look like traditional political speech). In this case, we're dealing with a condition of employment. Even if we consider it "speech", it's commercial, not political in nature, which courts could use to distinguish from the Citizens United precedent.