4 ms·
What about the right to choose who you associate with? These people don't want the law to stop everyone else, just protect them.
by pinephoneguy 5y ago
What about the right to choose who you associate with? These people don't want the law to stop everyone else, just protect them.
- shadowgovt 5y agoGreat question. The short answer is "The Civil Rights Act curtails the right to freedom of association." It declared protected classes and then made illegal telling those classes "We don't serve your kind here." Subsequent court precedent upheld Congress's right to do this without a Constitutional amendment to adjust the First Amendment (IANAL so I unfortunately cannot direct you to that precedent quickly; the thumbnail sketch as I understand it is that the right to association is derived from the right to assembly, and that right is for political purposes, i.e. the government can't tell people "you can't get together and complain that government sucks," but refusing to serve people of a particular race or hire people of a particular gender is not political association and not protected by 1A). The reason this case is even in question (as opposed to the Courts just saying "We already settled this") is that the precedent for whether the Civil Rights Act burdens freedom of expression (i.e. speech) is much thinner on the ground. They're both First Amendment rights, but they're rights with different sets of precedent (and different understanding of magnitude; the right to association is derived from protection of "peaceable assembly," but expression is synonymous with speech and directly and clearly protected by 1A).