You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws
Language: English
Pages: 200
ISBN: 1930865600
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Activists and courts are using antidiscrimination laws to erode civil liberties such as free speech, the free exercise of religion, and freedom of association. The books examines how these laws are being applied on college campuses and in the workplace in ways that threaten our fundamental freedoms.
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protected. Of course, avoiding some types of offensive speech is relatively easy, while avoiding offensive work-place speech by finding new employment can be difficult and costly. But if courts accepted Robinson ’s view that the First Amendment does not protect offensive speech that is very difficult or costly to avoid, much of modern First Amendment law would need to be discarded. For example, contrary to Supreme Court precedent, strikers would not have the right to picket outside their
the author of this book,19 have been personally victimized by bigots. But the alternative to protecting the constitutional rights of such scoundrels is much worse: the gradual evisceration of the pluralism, autonomy, and check on government power that civil liberties provide. Students and others interested in delving into the issues discussed in You Can’t Say That! in more detail should visit this book’s accompanying website, http://mason.gmu.edu/~dbernste/book/, which provides links to all
civil liberties in order to pursue it.1 Indeed, many important governmental interests, such as the government’s interest in reducing violent crime, are routinely subordinated to the First Amendment because they are not, constitutionally speaking, compelling interests. For example, incendiary speech currently protected by the First Amendment can encourage violent behavior by glorifying violence against women, as much ‘‘gangsta rap’’ does. Yet courts have shown no inclination to uphold bans on such
from its feminist critics. But Strossen cannot single-handedly reinvent the organization as one devoted solely to civil liberties, given the strong foothold other constituencies have achieved within the ACLU. Strossen concedes that when anti-discrimination laws and civil liberties conflict, the ACLU uses an ad hoc balancing test, choosing ‘‘between them in the context of particular facts, weighing the potency and applicability in each instance of the general values of liberty and equality.’’40 As
liberties when they see concern for such liberties emanating from legislatures. Conscientious legislators should halt the expansion of antidiscrimination law, and, wherever possible, reduce its scope. There should be a presumption of freedom of association, both because such a presumption protects freedom in and of itself—what is freedom if it does not include some protection of the right to choose one’s associates?—and because the growth of antidiscrimination law creates inevitable conflicts
