8 ms·

I still cannot wrap my head around the idea of making a boycott illegal. If it's not accompanied by speech, what is the difference between someone who actively

I still cannot wrap my head around the idea of making a boycott illegal. If it's not accompanied by speech, what is the difference between someone who actively avoids a product or one who simply would not have purchased it in the first place? How can that possibly be enforced? If I sign that form and then happen to not buy any of the products I'm not supposed to boycott, have I violated the contract?

nerdponx 4y ago
It's not illegal, but it does disqualify you from getting a federal government business contract. I think this is more of a gray area than advocates would like to make you believe. Whatever you might feel about Israel, you can't deny the fact that they are a strategically valuable geopolitical ally, and it's not unreasonable for the federal government to avoid doing businesses with companies that are actively and publicly boycotting a strategic ally. What if it was Taiwan instead?
- Animatronio 4y ago
  What if it was Qatar instead, or Saudi Arabia? Are they not allies? Are ppl allowed to express dissatisfaction with their behaviour?
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    Of course, but the government is also allowed to decide not to do business with those people. This case is more analogous to the case of the cake shop who wouldn't make a wedding cake for a gay couple. It's less about free speech in general and more about discrimination in doing business.
    - Animatronio 4y ago
      You mean this one: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/24/bakersfield-california-bakery-same-sex-wedding-cake https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/24/bakersfield-ca...
    - faxywaxy 4y ago
      The US and state governments are not private institutions. The money used to pay the contracts in question is collected from citizens who have to pay it. The government can't then turn around and gate that public money behind 1st amendment violating policy.
      - Manuel_D 4y ago
        Right: and the voters have decided that they don't want their tax dollars to be squandered paying a premium because contractors have decided to boycott. If someone wants to boycott Taiwan and avoid any semiconductors from TSMC, then they're engaging in significant self-sabotage and it's wise for the government to avoid people engaging in this behavior.
        faxywaxy 4y ago
        There is no premium to be paid for boycotting Israel and that fabricated scenario has nothing to do with pro-Israel lobbyist driven first amendment violations.
        Manuel_D 4y ago
        Any time you reject a segment of the market, you're limiting the pool of available vendors. This obviously applies more to markets with significant presence in the boycotted country. Semiconductors for Taiwant, Israel makes plenty of sensor and software products.
        faxywaxy 4y ago
        The only thing segmenting the market are the anti-BDS laws. You can boycott Israel and still bid on a government contract and let market forces do the work. This isn't an issue of market efficiency though, it's an issue of violating the first amendment.
        Manuel_D 4y ago
        Right except a specific country is excluded from that market. A company engaging in a boycott is saying "if the cheapest component comes from an Israeli firm, we're going to pay a prenup to source it somewhere from else." As a taxpayer, I don't want to be paying that premium.
  - Gibbon1 4y ago
    > Saudi Arabia? If you're a politician you aren't allowed to say anything against them either.
- jfengel 4y ago
  These are state contracts at issue here, not federal ones.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    I missed that, and it's an important detail.
    - mkoubaa 4y ago
      The bill of rights enshrine rights that states can not take away from citizens
      - nerdponx 4y ago
        Do citizens have a right to enter into business contracts with their state government? They might, but that's for the Supreme Court to decide.
        semiquaver 4y ago
        This is a silly and reductive lens that libertarians often apply. Look at the specific examples cited in the article: > the Arkansas Times [...] was asked to sign [a no-boycott certification] in order to renew its advertising contract with a state technical college. > A teacher in Kansas was told that she could not participate in the state’s teacher-training program because she refused to sign the anti-boycott form > A lawyer in Arizona was told that he could not be paid for his work on behalf of incarcerated people because he refused to sign the certification > a child speech pathologist in Texas lost her contract with a local school district because she refused to sign. > One town in Texas even briefly required victims of Hurricane Harvey to sign the anti-boycott certification as a condition of receiving disaster relief funds. It's a grotesque distortion to frame this case as involving the rights of citizens to contract with their state government and I'm certain you know it.
        mkoubaa 4y ago
        I'm sure most people who support these laws would think differently if as a matter of policy a state fired all state contractors (teachers accountants and firefighters, you name it) that were pro life
- bb88 4y ago
  > you can't deny the fact that they are a strategically valuable geopolitical ally. So ergo, we must destroy the first amendment to shield other countries from valid criticisms? I'd think we'd want our allies to respect our right to free speech above all else. Edited to add: I even think we would want to respect our right to free speech over the beliefs of our allies.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    What first amendment right is being destroyed? You have the right to boycott. The federal government also has the right to boycott you for choosing particular targets of your boycott.
    - bb88 4y ago
      The principle in question is favoritism based upon political speech. If, say, you boycott the democratic party (e.g.), then the Biden government would have every right to cancel any contracts because of your political speech. The only way to prove that you're not actually boycotting would be to donate to the democratic party.
      - hedora 4y ago
        Similarly, by the logic of the current anti-boycott laws, they could make you promise not to support those anti-Democrat nutjobs in the GOP.
    - crazygringo 4y ago
      No. The federal government does not have that right, that's the entire point of this lawsuit. And the entire point of the first amendment. In a democracy, a government does not have the right to selectively boycott its citizens for their political views. Otherwise, what's next -- the party in power refusing to award contracts to businesses that support the opposition party? You can see how democracy would collapse pretty quickly.
    - connicpu 4y ago
      Actually the government very specifically does not have the right to retaliate against you based upon protected speech you make, the entire point of the first amendment.
- tptacek 4y ago
  I don't think this is a gray area. There's a bunch of Supreme Court decisions striking down the state's ability to use business contracts to compel speech --- compelled speech was a big problem in the middle of the last century, as it was used to prop up local political machines.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    That's interesting, what cases should I read about to get the background on this?
- faxywaxy 4y ago
  - brigandish 4y ago
    > Osama bin Laden literally cited the Israeli bombing of Lebanon as his reason for the 9/11 attacks Bin Laden cited that as one of the reasons, there was a long list[1] that also included Western forces preventing genocide in East Timor (by the way, Christopher Hitchens gave an excoriating answer on this to some supine fool[2]), the partition of India/Pakistan, stoping "hope" in Somalia, the Russian "crusade" in Chechnya, another crusade in Bosnia (there's a lot of crusading going on), things in the Philippines, Sudan and Bangladesh, the UN for lots of things… there wasn't a cat fight in a Muslim's back garden that he couldn't turn into a reason to kill innocent people, but he also didn't hold back on his hatred for Israel and Jews, that is true. I may have missed something as there are a lot of grievances about "Muslim lands" in his speech but to portray it as being about one attack or one place would be to misrepresent his views. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/1636782.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/16... [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=axHR8AOxxkc https://youtube.com/watch?v=axHR8AOxxkc
    - faxywaxy 4y ago
      The link points to a direct quote from Osama bin Laden. That's not "misrepresenting his views": "God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the Towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the US Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden#September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden#September_11_a...
      - brigandish 4y ago
- lzooz 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/aipac/status/1590362232915132417 https://twitter.com/aipac/status/1590362232915132417 Just so you know how entrenched Israel (and a certain race) is inside the US government.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  No, it's definitely not a gray area -- it's utterly anti-democratic. What if the government only awarded contracts to companies who promised not to donate money to Democrat PAC's (or Republican PAC's)? What if the government only awarded contracts to companies who stayed silent on gay marriage, and didn't normalize it in their advertising? These strike at the heart of the first amendment. Companies are allowed to engage in political speech/action, and boycotting Israel is precisely that. Some people think Israel is a valuable ally, others think it's a horribly unjust and undemocratic country for its treatment of Palestinians. The government isn't allowed to favor or disfavor individuals or companies due to their political views. That's a bedrock principle of democracy. That's what the first amendment is about. There's zero gray area in this case.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    > What if the government only awarded contracts to companies who stayed silent on gay marriage, and didn't normalize it in their advertising? But they already do that, don't they? I mean, not anti gay marriage, but pro diversity. For some reason the UCF bought email lists from some entity, and they believe me to be a small business owner in some US state who shares my first name. I occasionally get emails from them asking me to join their diversity-training in order to become eligible as a supplier. That's pretty old news. The only new thing (and the reason the ACLU cares, I assume) is that it's affecting a view that is currently associated with the left (BDS/anti-semitism/anti-israeli campaigns).
    - crazygringo 4y ago
      You're correct in that the only area in the US where governments choose to award contracts in ways that are unrelated to performance is for diversity purposes. But diversity isn't speech. E.g. if a business is black-owned or female-owned has nothing to do with their political speech/views. And diversity is a unique case, related to protected classes, having to do with past explicit discrimination against these groups, and trying to remedy that to some small extent. In any case, it has nothing whatsoever to do with political expression, and therefore nothing to do with the first amendment. And so no, it has nothing to do with left/right either.
- jasmer 4y ago
  Oh, we can absolutely debate their value as an ally. And if a union wants to boycott Taiwan, or Canada god forbid, they probably should have the right to do so. It gets a bit more complicated with buyers however, what happens if companies do not want to 'sell to' groups, like 'Republicans' or 'LGBTQ advocates' etc.. I think we probably ought to err on letting people decide who they want to sell and buy from and then be very careful when we interject on that, with a difference to protecting individuals rights, and from specific kinds of harm and/or arbitrary treatment. Which is all a bit different from the government itself deciding who and who not to buy from.
- colordrops 4y ago
  These boycott laws were not made because the government felt Israel is an important ally, but rather because pro-israel lobbyists pushed for them.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    It would be an interesting argument if the Supreme Court struck down a law on the grounds that it was passed in bad faith. Has that been done before?
    - colordrops 4y ago
      Aren't a large amount of laws passed in bad faith? For instance all the acronym laws from congress, like the PATRIOT act. Or the solar tax that is under review in California being pushed by electric companies.
luckylion 4y ago
If it's not announced, if your intentions are not known, is it a boycott? I'd say no, because you're not boycotting Store A if you're shopping at Store B for some reason other than your hate of Store A for store-unrelated reasons (e.g. the political stance of the store owner, or the color of their skin).
- bb88 4y ago
  Even simpler, making your intentions known should fall under "political speech" -- which currently enjoy the widest protections under the courts.
- Animatronio 4y ago
  This is precisely how one would create a silent majority - muzzling any dissenting speech or attitude.
bb88 4y ago
The original American colonists boycotted the tea from England. Under the appeals court ruling, things like boycotting twitter could be made illegal.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Admittedly I don’t know American history well. Are you referring to the Boston tea party or was there a much longer running boycott? I ask because my weak understanding is that colonists waylaid ships in port and actively destroyed the cargo. That’s more than a boycott, I think?
  - char_star_star 4y ago
    Non-consumption and non-importation movements in response to taxes levied on various goods imported from England. Precursors to the future direct action taken at the Boston Tea Party. https://www.masshist.org/revolution/non_importation.php https://www.masshist.org/revolution/non_importation.php
    - Waterluvian 4y ago
      Thanks for the link and lesson! And I’m guessing that when the ACLU mentions the Boston Tea Party at the beginning of the article, they mean the bigger series of events and not as much the destruction of property in the harbour. I imagine they’re not advocating for the constitutional right to illegally destroy property as a form of boycott. (Fully appreciating that context was very different in 1773, I’m not suggesting the Boston Tea Party was “wrong”.)
      - hedora 4y ago
        It was less about the taxes, and more about the fact that Britain banned the import of tea by any other country. These days, we have plenty of monopolies that probably deserve similar treatment (or anti trust actions), so the schools don't teach that part of the story.
jawns 4y ago
Here's the way it works, in practice. Legislators who propose and pass this legislation use it to demonstrate their support for Israel, or coal mining, or gun rights, or whatever anti-boycotting cause they're advancing. They are the primary beneficiaries here, because it helps them get donations and get re-elected. Entities who are forced to sign these pledges generally put as much thought into it as you or I put into agreeing to a TOS with a binding arbitration agreement. In other words, not very much thought at all. Because ... As you've pointed out, the government cannot, in practice, prove that those entities are actually boycotting unless the entities come right out and say it. So if the entities actually want to boycott Israel, they can continue to do so without announcing it. The law doesn't actually stop anyone from boycotting Israel; at best, it merely stops them from publicizing what they're doing. The reason this doesn't get much push-back from most people who are forced to sign the pledge is because they weren't actually planning to boycott anyway. But there's a small number, such as the publisher who's at the heart of this case, who had no plans to boycott Israel, but who isn't going to let those legislators bully them.
- feet 4y ago
  So it's only illegal if accompanied by speech, thereby making a specific speech illegal. Isn't that a first amendment violation?
  - luckylion 4y ago
    It's not illegal, you just wouldn't get government contracts, or be accepted as a government employee. Essentially, you can't say "don't buy from Jews" and be a teacher or sponsor KKK-marches and do landscaping for the local government. You can do both without doing business with the government though, so legality is not questioned.
    - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
      That's not how the first amendment works, as it does put limitations on the kinds of speech that governments are allowed to favor (or disfavor). Just saying it only affects employment or contracts does not act like a "get out of jail free" card for governments. Of course, there is a ton of gray area here that the courts will have to rule on, but the whole point the ACLU is making is that they believe these anti-boycott laws are in violation of the first amendment.
spoonjim 4y ago
It’s not at all hard to enforce boycott prohibitions against companies. Above a handful of people, a company that wants to boycott X will need to communicate that, most likely in writing, to their employees.
SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
The original antiboycott laws were an unfortunate response to an otherwise intractable issue. Until recently, most countries in the Arab world had both a primary boycott on Israel and a secondary boycott on any company that does business with Israel. So there was a real and pressing concern that some companies might feel they have to boycott Israel, not because they themselves have an issue with the country but because they can't afford to sacrifice the rest of the Middle East market for it. Antiboycott laws were a solution, and a solution that seems to have worked pretty well - the Arab League never explicitly revoked their boycott, but it's virtually unenforced and nobody has to choose between doing business with Israel and doing business with the Arab world. The new wave of antiboycott laws this article is referring to are much less justified, I think, but you'll note that they're on the same topic in response to still-ongoing efforts by the BDS movement to promote a secondary boycott. So it's not as unreasonable as it would first seem.
- hedora 4y ago
  The article points out that the law is being enforced against individuals. As an individual, I would definitely support BDS businesses if I could. I'd stop doing so after Israel ended it's eternal war / apartheid system. The point of a boycott is to allow individuals to force companies to take actions, not to avoid hurting the amorphous feelings of corporations that don't have a problem with the status quo. Note that a large percentage (and sometimes the majority) of Jewish Israelis disapprove of the onging human rights violations BDS is trying to end.
skybrian 4y ago
Here are some possible second-order effects if you can't say that you boycott X in writing. - It means you can't advertise that you boycott X and get business from other people who also want to boycott X. - It means you can't require a subcontractor to also boycott X when doing a job for you.

nerdponx 4y ago

It's not illegal, but it does disqualify you from getting a federal government business contract. I think this is more of a gray area than advocates would like to make you believe. Whatever you might feel about Israel, you can't deny the fact that they are a strategically valuable geopolitical ally, and it's not unreasonable for the federal government to avoid doing businesses with companies that are actively and publicly boycotting a strategic ally. What if it was Taiwan instead?

Animatronio 4y ago
What if it was Qatar instead, or Saudi Arabia? Are they not allies? Are ppl allowed to express dissatisfaction with their behaviour?
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Of course, but the government is also allowed to decide not to do business with those people. This case is more analogous to the case of the cake shop who wouldn't make a wedding cake for a gay couple. It's less about free speech in general and more about discrimination in doing business.
  - Animatronio 4y ago
    You mean this one: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/24/bakersfield-california-bakery-same-sex-wedding-cake https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/24/bakersfield-ca...
  - faxywaxy 4y ago
    The US and state governments are not private institutions. The money used to pay the contracts in question is collected from citizens who have to pay it. The government can't then turn around and gate that public money behind 1st amendment violating policy.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      Right: and the voters have decided that they don't want their tax dollars to be squandered paying a premium because contractors have decided to boycott. If someone wants to boycott Taiwan and avoid any semiconductors from TSMC, then they're engaging in significant self-sabotage and it's wise for the government to avoid people engaging in this behavior.
      - faxywaxy 4y ago
        There is no premium to be paid for boycotting Israel and that fabricated scenario has nothing to do with pro-Israel lobbyist driven first amendment violations.
        Manuel_D 4y ago
        Any time you reject a segment of the market, you're limiting the pool of available vendors. This obviously applies more to markets with significant presence in the boycotted country. Semiconductors for Taiwant, Israel makes plenty of sensor and software products.
        faxywaxy 4y ago
        The only thing segmenting the market are the anti-BDS laws. You can boycott Israel and still bid on a government contract and let market forces do the work. This isn't an issue of market efficiency though, it's an issue of violating the first amendment.
        Manuel_D 4y ago
        Right except a specific country is excluded from that market. A company engaging in a boycott is saying "if the cheapest component comes from an Israeli firm, we're going to pay a prenup to source it somewhere from else." As a taxpayer, I don't want to be paying that premium.
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  > Saudi Arabia? If you're a politician you aren't allowed to say anything against them either.
jfengel 4y ago
These are state contracts at issue here, not federal ones.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  I missed that, and it's an important detail.
  - mkoubaa 4y ago
    The bill of rights enshrine rights that states can not take away from citizens
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      Do citizens have a right to enter into business contracts with their state government? They might, but that's for the Supreme Court to decide.
      - semiquaver 4y ago
        This is a silly and reductive lens that libertarians often apply. Look at the specific examples cited in the article: > the Arkansas Times [...] was asked to sign [a no-boycott certification] in order to renew its advertising contract with a state technical college. > A teacher in Kansas was told that she could not participate in the state’s teacher-training program because she refused to sign the anti-boycott form > A lawyer in Arizona was told that he could not be paid for his work on behalf of incarcerated people because he refused to sign the certification > a child speech pathologist in Texas lost her contract with a local school district because she refused to sign. > One town in Texas even briefly required victims of Hurricane Harvey to sign the anti-boycott certification as a condition of receiving disaster relief funds. It's a grotesque distortion to frame this case as involving the rights of citizens to contract with their state government and I'm certain you know it.
      - mkoubaa 4y ago
        I'm sure most people who support these laws would think differently if as a matter of policy a state fired all state contractors (teachers accountants and firefighters, you name it) that were pro life
bb88 4y ago
> you can't deny the fact that they are a strategically valuable geopolitical ally. So ergo, we must destroy the first amendment to shield other countries from valid criticisms? I'd think we'd want our allies to respect our right to free speech above all else. Edited to add: I even think we would want to respect our right to free speech over the beliefs of our allies.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  What first amendment right is being destroyed? You have the right to boycott. The federal government also has the right to boycott you for choosing particular targets of your boycott.
  - bb88 4y ago
    The principle in question is favoritism based upon political speech. If, say, you boycott the democratic party (e.g.), then the Biden government would have every right to cancel any contracts because of your political speech. The only way to prove that you're not actually boycotting would be to donate to the democratic party.
    - hedora 4y ago
      Similarly, by the logic of the current anti-boycott laws, they could make you promise not to support those anti-Democrat nutjobs in the GOP.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    No. The federal government does not have that right, that's the entire point of this lawsuit. And the entire point of the first amendment. In a democracy, a government does not have the right to selectively boycott its citizens for their political views. Otherwise, what's next -- the party in power refusing to award contracts to businesses that support the opposition party? You can see how democracy would collapse pretty quickly.
  - connicpu 4y ago
    Actually the government very specifically does not have the right to retaliate against you based upon protected speech you make, the entire point of the first amendment.
tptacek 4y ago
I don't think this is a gray area. There's a bunch of Supreme Court decisions striking down the state's ability to use business contracts to compel speech --- compelled speech was a big problem in the middle of the last century, as it was used to prop up local political machines.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  That's interesting, what cases should I read about to get the background on this?
faxywaxy 4y ago
- brigandish 4y ago
  > Osama bin Laden literally cited the Israeli bombing of Lebanon as his reason for the 9/11 attacks Bin Laden cited that as one of the reasons, there was a long list[1] that also included Western forces preventing genocide in East Timor (by the way, Christopher Hitchens gave an excoriating answer on this to some supine fool[2]), the partition of India/Pakistan, stoping "hope" in Somalia, the Russian "crusade" in Chechnya, another crusade in Bosnia (there's a lot of crusading going on), things in the Philippines, Sudan and Bangladesh, the UN for lots of things… there wasn't a cat fight in a Muslim's back garden that he couldn't turn into a reason to kill innocent people, but he also didn't hold back on his hatred for Israel and Jews, that is true. I may have missed something as there are a lot of grievances about "Muslim lands" in his speech but to portray it as being about one attack or one place would be to misrepresent his views. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/1636782.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/16... [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=axHR8AOxxkc https://youtube.com/watch?v=axHR8AOxxkc
  - faxywaxy 4y ago
    The link points to a direct quote from Osama bin Laden. That's not "misrepresenting his views": "God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the Towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the US Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden#September_11_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden#September_11_a...
    - brigandish 4y ago
lzooz 4y ago
https://twitter.com/aipac/status/1590362232915132417 https://twitter.com/aipac/status/1590362232915132417 Just so you know how entrenched Israel (and a certain race) is inside the US government.
crazygringo 4y ago
No, it's definitely not a gray area -- it's utterly anti-democratic. What if the government only awarded contracts to companies who promised not to donate money to Democrat PAC's (or Republican PAC's)? What if the government only awarded contracts to companies who stayed silent on gay marriage, and didn't normalize it in their advertising? These strike at the heart of the first amendment. Companies are allowed to engage in political speech/action, and boycotting Israel is precisely that. Some people think Israel is a valuable ally, others think it's a horribly unjust and undemocratic country for its treatment of Palestinians. The government isn't allowed to favor or disfavor individuals or companies due to their political views. That's a bedrock principle of democracy. That's what the first amendment is about. There's zero gray area in this case.
- luckylion 4y ago
  > What if the government only awarded contracts to companies who stayed silent on gay marriage, and didn't normalize it in their advertising? But they already do that, don't they? I mean, not anti gay marriage, but pro diversity. For some reason the UCF bought email lists from some entity, and they believe me to be a small business owner in some US state who shares my first name. I occasionally get emails from them asking me to join their diversity-training in order to become eligible as a supplier. That's pretty old news. The only new thing (and the reason the ACLU cares, I assume) is that it's affecting a view that is currently associated with the left (BDS/anti-semitism/anti-israeli campaigns).
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    You're correct in that the only area in the US where governments choose to award contracts in ways that are unrelated to performance is for diversity purposes. But diversity isn't speech. E.g. if a business is black-owned or female-owned has nothing to do with their political speech/views. And diversity is a unique case, related to protected classes, having to do with past explicit discrimination against these groups, and trying to remedy that to some small extent. In any case, it has nothing whatsoever to do with political expression, and therefore nothing to do with the first amendment. And so no, it has nothing to do with left/right either.
jasmer 4y ago
Oh, we can absolutely debate their value as an ally. And if a union wants to boycott Taiwan, or Canada god forbid, they probably should have the right to do so. It gets a bit more complicated with buyers however, what happens if companies do not want to 'sell to' groups, like 'Republicans' or 'LGBTQ advocates' etc.. I think we probably ought to err on letting people decide who they want to sell and buy from and then be very careful when we interject on that, with a difference to protecting individuals rights, and from specific kinds of harm and/or arbitrary treatment. Which is all a bit different from the government itself deciding who and who not to buy from.
colordrops 4y ago
These boycott laws were not made because the government felt Israel is an important ally, but rather because pro-israel lobbyists pushed for them.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  It would be an interesting argument if the Supreme Court struck down a law on the grounds that it was passed in bad faith. Has that been done before?
  - colordrops 4y ago
    Aren't a large amount of laws passed in bad faith? For instance all the acronym laws from congress, like the PATRIOT act. Or the solar tax that is under review in California being pushed by electric companies.

luckylion 4y ago

If it's not announced, if your intentions are not known, is it a boycott? I'd say no, because you're not boycotting Store A if you're shopping at Store B for some reason other than your hate of Store A for store-unrelated reasons (e.g. the political stance of the store owner, or the color of their skin).

bb88 4y ago
Even simpler, making your intentions known should fall under "political speech" -- which currently enjoy the widest protections under the courts.
Animatronio 4y ago
This is precisely how one would create a silent majority - muzzling any dissenting speech or attitude.

bb88 4y ago

The original American colonists boycotted the tea from England. Under the appeals court ruling, things like boycotting twitter could be made illegal.

Waterluvian 4y ago
Admittedly I don’t know American history well. Are you referring to the Boston tea party or was there a much longer running boycott? I ask because my weak understanding is that colonists waylaid ships in port and actively destroyed the cargo. That’s more than a boycott, I think?
- char_star_star 4y ago
  Non-consumption and non-importation movements in response to taxes levied on various goods imported from England. Precursors to the future direct action taken at the Boston Tea Party. https://www.masshist.org/revolution/non_importation.php https://www.masshist.org/revolution/non_importation.php
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    Thanks for the link and lesson! And I’m guessing that when the ACLU mentions the Boston Tea Party at the beginning of the article, they mean the bigger series of events and not as much the destruction of property in the harbour. I imagine they’re not advocating for the constitutional right to illegally destroy property as a form of boycott. (Fully appreciating that context was very different in 1773, I’m not suggesting the Boston Tea Party was “wrong”.)
    - hedora 4y ago
      It was less about the taxes, and more about the fact that Britain banned the import of tea by any other country. These days, we have plenty of monopolies that probably deserve similar treatment (or anti trust actions), so the schools don't teach that part of the story.

jawns 4y ago

Here's the way it works, in practice. Legislators who propose and pass this legislation use it to demonstrate their support for Israel, or coal mining, or gun rights, or whatever anti-boycotting cause they're advancing. They are the primary beneficiaries here, because it helps them get donations and get re-elected. Entities who are forced to sign these pledges generally put as much thought into it as you or I put into agreeing to a TOS with a binding arbitration agreement. In other words, not very much thought at all. Because ... As you've pointed out, the government cannot, in practice, prove that those entities are actually boycotting unless the entities come right out and say it. So if the entities actually want to boycott Israel, they can continue to do so without announcing it. The law doesn't actually stop anyone from boycotting Israel; at best, it merely stops them from publicizing what they're doing. The reason this doesn't get much push-back from most people who are forced to sign the pledge is because they weren't actually planning to boycott anyway. But there's a small number, such as the publisher who's at the heart of this case, who had no plans to boycott Israel, but who isn't going to let those legislators bully them.

feet 4y ago
So it's only illegal if accompanied by speech, thereby making a specific speech illegal. Isn't that a first amendment violation?
- luckylion 4y ago
  It's not illegal, you just wouldn't get government contracts, or be accepted as a government employee. Essentially, you can't say "don't buy from Jews" and be a teacher or sponsor KKK-marches and do landscaping for the local government. You can do both without doing business with the government though, so legality is not questioned.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    That's not how the first amendment works, as it does put limitations on the kinds of speech that governments are allowed to favor (or disfavor). Just saying it only affects employment or contracts does not act like a "get out of jail free" card for governments. Of course, there is a ton of gray area here that the courts will have to rule on, but the whole point the ACLU is making is that they believe these anti-boycott laws are in violation of the first amendment.

spoonjim 4y ago

It’s not at all hard to enforce boycott prohibitions against companies. Above a handful of people, a company that wants to boycott X will need to communicate that, most likely in writing, to their employees.

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago

The original antiboycott laws were an unfortunate response to an otherwise intractable issue. Until recently, most countries in the Arab world had both a primary boycott on Israel and a secondary boycott on any company that does business with Israel. So there was a real and pressing concern that some companies might feel they have to boycott Israel, not because they themselves have an issue with the country but because they can't afford to sacrifice the rest of the Middle East market for it. Antiboycott laws were a solution, and a solution that seems to have worked pretty well - the Arab League never explicitly revoked their boycott, but it's virtually unenforced and nobody has to choose between doing business with Israel and doing business with the Arab world. The new wave of antiboycott laws this article is referring to are much less justified, I think, but you'll note that they're on the same topic in response to still-ongoing efforts by the BDS movement to promote a secondary boycott. So it's not as unreasonable as it would first seem.

hedora 4y ago
The article points out that the law is being enforced against individuals. As an individual, I would definitely support BDS businesses if I could. I'd stop doing so after Israel ended it's eternal war / apartheid system. The point of a boycott is to allow individuals to force companies to take actions, not to avoid hurting the amorphous feelings of corporations that don't have a problem with the status quo. Note that a large percentage (and sometimes the majority) of Jewish Israelis disapprove of the onging human rights violations BDS is trying to end.

skybrian 4y ago

Here are some possible second-order effects if you can't say that you boycott X in writing. - It means you can't advertise that you boycott X and get business from other people who also want to boycott X. - It means you can't require a subcontractor to also boycott X when doing a job for you.