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Supreme Court Opinion on Compelled Speech and Protected Class [pdf]
- Natsu 3y agoIt was interesting to see Gorsuch call out Sotomeyer's dissent like that. You'd think they heard two entirely different cases.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tetromino_ 3y agoSo how far does this new logic take us? Does it mean, for example, that religious lawyers will now have the right to refuse to defend gay clients (since giving an argument in court is creative speech)? Does it mean that religious publishers will now refuse manuscript submissions from gay authors (since the publisher's editing work is creative speech)? The potential fallout from this decision is massive and disheartening...
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoYes. This has been happening to conservatives for years. Why would you want the government to compel you to work with / serve someone?
- morkalork 3y ago[flagged]
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoAgain, why would people want the government to compel people to serve everyone?
- richbell 3y agoIt wasn't that long ago that people wouldn't serve black patrons, until the government compelled them to.
- WC3w6pXxgGd 3y ago[dead]
- msla 3y agoTo attack discrimination.
- the_gastropod 3y agoBecause it works. Having “white only” restaurants, schools, pools, etc. was (hopefully) obviously horrific. Requiring service to black Americans clearly was effective. We’re sliding backwards with this ruling.
- koolba 3y agoNot at all. Between this and the court throwing out affirmative action in higher education, we’re finally getting past this crap. Next step is going to be eliminating affirmative action in private sector hiring practices. In all these situations it’s helpful to imagine flipping around the characters to see the sheer nonsense of the complaints. Would it be morally acceptable to only hire whites? Would a design firm run by a gay man be required to design an anti gay marriage billboard?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- shadowgovt 3y agoI mean, yes. Traditionally, prior to the recent rulings, a gay man running a design firm would in fact be compelled to to do the best work he felt he could for, say, a Catholic church, because religion is a protected class. So what? He's not obligated to own a business and the fact he has hung a shingle bears some obligation to serve his fellow Americans. > Would it be morally acceptable to only hire whites? I think you're tilting at a windmill here. The more accurate question would be "Would it be morally acceptable for an all black institution to categorically disregard white candidates because they don't have that 'urban vibe' the institution is going for." Well would it?
- eschaton 3y agoNo it hasn’t. What’s been happening is that if someone operates a place of public accommodation, they don’t get to discriminate against members of protected classes. Bigots attempt to reframe this as “conservative speech is being suppressed” and “conservative freedom of association is being threatened” but neither are true. Don’t want to have to serve everyone? Don’t run a business that serves the public.
- michaelmrose 3y agoLet's consider the case of a disabled person. As a class disabled people are a small minority that doesn't on average possess great wealth. A business and indeed in some areas all or most of business in a category may profitably choose to focus on other customers and make it impossible for such customers to avail themselves of that category of good or services. Then consider black diners during segregation. Minorities like disabled folks are a minority of the population with a proportionally even smaller portion of the wealth. Like disabled people they could be unprofitable to serve as bigots may not want to sit down to break bread near minorities. In both cased we decided as a society not to give merchants a choice for the overall good of society and those folks. Furthermore ensuring businesses are conspicuously made to do normal things like serving all customers sends a not so subtle signal that those people are normal and acceptable and those attempting to isolate them are transgressive. If we can leave off speaking in generalities there actually IS a wrong and a right side to this affair. It actually IS OK for people to be gay and the converse position is a mental disorder. Not all "preferences" are equally morally grounded and it does nobody any good to prop up mental disorders like religious conservatism as if they were normal acceptable positions.
- CalChris 3y agoIt isn't you. It's an LLC engaging in trade. You get a bundle of rights with that LLC along with which come some regulated duties.
- sarchertech 3y agoLLCs or corporations have nothing to do with this particular issue. You can operate a business as a sole proprietorship where there is no distinction between the business and yourself and public accommodation laws still apply.
- CalChris 3y ago303 CREATIVE LLC ET AL. v. ELENIS ET AL
- sarchertech 3y agoAnd if she was operating as a sole proprietorship it would make no difference to the case at hand.
- cassonmars 3y agoWould you want a lawyer who disagrees with your very existence? I wouldn’t.
- olliej 3y agoImagine you’re a gay person arrested for being gay in a republican county and all the public defenders get to refuse to defend you because you’re gay. Which is of course is the goal: lgbt people are not allowed to exist (as we already see in those states currently making it illegal to be trans)
- olliej 3y agoYes. That is the whole goal of this SC: you must serve people who believe gay people aren’t people, but you cannot discriminate against those people because they don’t believe gay people are people, because their homophobia is protected but a gay person’s existence is not (because they aren’t people).
- cperciva 3y agoRefuse to defend gay clients, no. Refuse to defend gay rights, probably? The distinction is being drawn between the identity of a potential client and the nature of the creative work being requested. EDIT: I'm reminded of a recent case in BC where a pre-op trans woman wanted a Brazilian wax and was refused service; the BC human rights tribunal held that while it is illegal to discriminate against trans people, she was being legitimately refused service because the service she was asking for -- waxing male genitalia -- was not a service which was available to anyone else either.
- targey 3y ago[flagged]
- oatmeal1 3y agoYou are compelled to accept business from protected classes. The government cannot compel you to speak words against your values. In this case the government could compel the evangelical website designer to accept business from a gay couple, but could not compel her to design a website that endorsed gay marriage.
- orangepurple 3y agoSpeech in this case refers to more than spoken words
- KingLancelot 3y ago[dead]
- jakelazaroff 3y agoLet’s say you only design wedding websites and you don’t believe in same-sex marriage. How do you square that circle?
- candiddevmike 3y agoStart believing in same-sex marriage?
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoHypothetically a straight person could marry someone of the same sex (or vice versa). And I’m sure it happens once in a while.
- jakelazaroff 3y agoWhat point do you think you’re making?
- ttyprintk 3y agoPractically, in other countries, for example alcohol-prohibited ones, workers do the design with placeholder content. This does not always work. There’s a severe social penalty if one of those workers is (against their will and efforts) associated with a forbidden practice. People who claim this ruling in the USA is about liberty are in denial that it only promotes fear.
- lispisok 3y agoYou cannot refuse to sell somebody a bicycle because they are gay. You can refuse to write "I support gay marriage" on a custom bicycle paint job. There is a lot of murky middle ground between those two examples but people are still struggling to understand the most clear examples.
- claytongulick 3y agoBeing forced into service to anyone should be repugnant to a free society. It's the antithesis of self-ownership. Let's follow Godwin's law: Imagine a gay Nazi come into your printing store and demands that you print Nazi propaganda. Do you really want to be forced to print that material simply because the customer is a member of a protected class?
- shadowgovt 3y agoNazis aren't a protected class. The difference being you can decide to stop being a Nazi but you can't decide to stop being black. > Being forced into service to anyone should be repugnant to a free society Nobody is forced to be a business owner. When the state licenses a business, that licensure implies all manner of obligations, from compliance with the civil rights act and associated acts to EPA protections to health code compliance. Your freedoms are curtailed by being banned from storing rat poison above food preparation stations... Why is the obligation to serve a gay person who sits down at your restaurant table any different?
- lispisok 3y agoBeing a business owner does not mean government or others can compel speech from you > Why is the obligation to serve a gay person who sits down at your restaurant table any different? Serving a cheeseburger is not speech. Writing "I support gay marriage" on a cheeseburger is
- olliej 3y agoRefusing to sell cheeseburgers to gay people because you’re don’t think they’re people is not free speech
- Natsu 3y agoIndeed, it's not. The opinion only protects the commission of expressive works, not the general buying & selling of any goods. You'd have to work really hard to make selling a cheeseburger an expressive act.
- clarkmoody 3y agoIs the right of freedom of association stronger than someone else's "right" to your labor?
- colechristensen 3y agoYes, the government's role in regulating commerce is stronger than freedom of association rights for people engaging in commerce. i.e. you don't have to be friends with someone you don't like, but you can't deny them commerce (your labor) based on their being in a protected class. That is, if for whatever reason you don't like people of a certain (Race | Age | Color | Religion/faith | Sex | National origin or ancestry | Disability | Genetic information | Citizenship | Veteran status) you cannot deny them business. You can according to this ruling deny them business if the work is an act of expression you refuse to do.
- alphanullmeric 3y agoYes. Do you believe you have the right to force others to service you, or do you believe that force is only justified in response to force? It’s one or the other.
- abeppu 3y agoI believe that people and businesses which offer services _to the public_ can and should be forced to serve everyone. No, you cannot have a whites-only lunch counter, taxi-cab, school, church or store, even if you're a white supremacist who genuinely believes that non-white people are somehow inferior. No, you cannot have a accountancy practice which bars hiring women even if the owner genuinely believes that women should be in the home. Yes, sometimes the military must be sent in to oversee the integration of a high school. The creation of a society in which a class of people is held as a second class which can be excluded from public accommodations is itself an act of violence.
- baggy_trough 3y agoNo, that is not an act of violence.
- alphanullmeric 3y agoNo, not having a right to my service is not force, and in fact arresting people for not servicing you is force. I’m glad we agree that you don’t believe that force is only justified in response to force.
- olliej 3y agoYou understand that you’re saying that segregation should be legal? That the buses in Montgomery were right to remove Rosa parks, etc?
- alphanullmeric 3y agoNo, I don’t think the government can arrest people for choosing to service different races. The Montgomery bus line was in fact forced to remove Rosa Parks by Jim Crow laws, which I oppose. And I doubly oppose it because you shouldn’t be forced to pay for something (taxpayer funded transport) you don’t have the right to use. And I triply don’t oppose it because I don’t think you should be forced to pay for it regardless of whether you have the right to use it. And had that public service not had the ability to obtain funding by force, it would not even be profitable to deny people on race in the first place, regardless of legality.
- tacitusarc 3y agoLawyers refuse clients all the time. I’d imagine a deeply religious lawyer may refuse to represent a gay client as their religious beliefs would make them unable to represent the client properly.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pandaman 3y agoA brief Google search shows that all the lawyers already have the right to refuse any client, though it comes in the form of answers from lawyers themselves, and they could be lying. What made you think they did not have such a right?
- lootsauce 3y ago“Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation’s answer is tolerance, not coercion. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.”
- shadowgovt 3y agoYou can think and speak anything you want. But when you put an advertisement in the newspaper that you provide services and then you refuse to provide those services because of who somebody is, and who somebody is is a protected class... Well, up until recently, that was pretty well understood to be illegal.
- Grum9 3y ago[dead]
- antiquark 3y agoMakes sense. Imagine if a Muslim baker was forced to make a cake with the text "Allah is a False God." Good choice by the Supreme Court!
- michaelmrose 3y agoThere wasn't an actual case of injury brought before the court they ignored centuries of precedent to allow someone to bring a fake case about a hypothetical injury that they might have sustained in the future. Under this theory I ought to be able to sue a woman I'm dating in case we in the future we have sex and she may in the future choose to abort my imaginary baby.
- antiquark 3y agoSo you think a Muslim baker could be forced to make a cake with the text "Allah is a False God"?
- michaelmrose 3y agoYour answer is contrived there is no reason other than deliberately fucking with the baker to ask him to bake that and furthermore any bakery could trivially forbid offensive orders without relying particularly on his religious freedoms. Meanwhile Jake loves John for instance has a meritorious purpose and is non-offensive. Can you think of a less contrived test?
- gjsman-1000 3y agoA meritorious and non-offensive purpose, in your non-religious opinion, at the complete disregard of the deeply-held beliefs from the other party. Though I suppose I should rejoice that the law protects Muslims from bigots like you who state elsewhere that their views and people like them are the equivalent of a mental disorder. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36546184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36546184
- 3y ago
- carabiner 3y agoTIL you can sue on hypothetical grounds: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-rules-web-designer-refused-work-sex-weddings-rcna68629 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court... She was never asked to make a website for a gay couple, and she even fabricated one for her case: https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-gay-rights-lgbtq-website-385ec911ce0ca2f415966078eddb66da https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-gay-rights-lgbtq-we...
- gjsman-1000 3y ago... fabricated one for her case, according to the Colorado Attorney General who was just stung with losing this case.
- tedivm 3y agoAccording to the actual person she claimed had has solicited her business, and who happened to be a happily married straight man.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoAccording to the person and the story the media claims is that individual. The person has never come publicly outside of the media, and at this point, I have my doubts whether the person is the same, or whether the person is telling the truth (plenty of incentive to lie - and no oath to bind).
- pseudalopex 3y agoWhat does come publicly outside the media mean? How would you learn it happened?
- paulmd 3y agoFolsom Pride is a wild place
- 3y ago
- twelfthnight 3y agoIt's interesting that you could use the first amendment to argue the exact opposite in this ruling. For example, by this logic social media is perfectly in their right to block posts from political positions they disagree with, which many folks might find impinges on their right to free speech. Seems like a weird case for the Supreme to have taken in the first place, I don't really see how it clarifies anything really, since we still compel businesses to not restrict services based on protected classes. EDIT: Feel like I'm being clumsy in my writing above. What I'm trying to argue is--to me--it seems the crux of the case is whether (a) "won't make sites for gay marriage" == (b) "won't serve gay people in my restaurant". The latter is pretty clearly illegal, even the ruling upholds that. So if you think (a) == (b), then the ruling seems contradictory. If you think (a) != (b), then the ruling makes sense, akin to saying "a heavy-metal focused website maker has every right to refuse to make country music websites". I can see both sides of the argument (a) == (b) and (a) != (b). What I can't see is how the First Amendment can be used to justify whether (a) == (b) or not. If you _already assume_ (a) != (b), then you can say a business shouldn't be compelled to say anything. However, you must first justify that (a) != (b). I don't think this ruling does that, so I don't think it's a very useful ruling for anything in the future, even if I see the merits of preventing overreach in government censorship.
- candiddevmike 3y agoThe supreme court has become ideologically driven and is following an agenda, not the constitution.
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- colechristensen 3y ago>which many folks might find impinges on their right to free speech. The constitution protects you from the government impinging on your free speech. It does not protect you from Facebook, your mother, or some random retailer from doing so. The philosophical concept of "free speech" exists beyond the constitutional concept which is a subset.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe]
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoPlenty of discussion elsewhere today: US Supreme Court rules website designer can refuse to serve same-sex couples https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36540849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36540849 Supreme Court Rules Web Designer Can Refuse Work on Same-Sex Wedding Announcemen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36539051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36539051 Supreme Court allows web designer to refuse service for same-sex weddings https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36535754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36535754