European here so it may not be clear to me, but I thought discriminating against religious movements like the church or trump supporters is still illegal. Correct?
Political affiliation is not protected, religious affiliation is. It’s true that the Right has been doing their level best to politicise their religious feelings into public life, so that barring Trump supporters effectively excludes Evangelicals and a majority of Catholics. This may not be their desired outcome, but perhaps they shouldn’t have tied their religious sentiment to political causes.
A slight majority of Catholics supported Biden over Trump, actually. Probably because Biden is Catholic; a slight majority supported Trump over Clinton.
Religions are protected classes under the constitution, political groups are not. Free speech is also protected. The combination of these factors means that weather the shop keeper in OPs photo is breaking the law is entirely dependant on how you interpret the constitution, which is what the supreme court is supposed to do.
I think the shop in question could get in trouble over the church statement if they are not doing something “free speech” related, that is the only way the new ruling applies. Though what the free speech bit means is gonna depend on what the fedsoc six want, and they will steer it to the GOP always.
Yeah, religion is a protected class, so while they can probably refuse trump supporters the sign about churches is probably illegal. If this is some type of store that makes customized products then they can refuse to customize anything in ways they don’t agree with, but it’s totally illegal to refuse service just based on who the customer is
Political affiliation is not a protected class. You are permitted to discriminate based on politics. Religious affiliation is a protected class. You cannot discriminate solely on the basis of religion… Until now.
Conservatives love to discriminate, but their new rulings are also making it easier to discriminate against them.
It’s complicated and the implications and scope are not entirely clear.
The court stated that creative works such as web design qualify as a form of speech, and that the first amendment does not allow the government to use law to force creators to speak any message — especially one with which they disagree. Essentially, any business with something that might be considered speech as its product or service may be free to discriminate against protected classes. We aren’t sure how far this will extend in practice, but I expect many will test it.
In this case of this post, it depends on what is being sold.
Edit: wrote this before my coffee and thus neglected to point out what replies said: political affiliation is not a protected class in America and these signs are a bit misleading. See replies.
These signs are surely in response to the recent US Supreme Court ruling which allowed a website designer to refuse to make websites for same-sex weddings.
First, churches are religious; Trump supporters are political, and not religious. In the US, religion is a “protected class”, but political alignment is not. But traditionally, political alignment or part affiliation is not discriminated against, even if it is federall legal to do so. (Various states may have their own clauses making political alignment a protected class in certain contexts, I’m not sure.) Also important to this discussion is that sexual preference is not a protected class federally, although I know that many states have enshrined protection for sexual preference in their own state laws.
If a case were brought about discrimination against Trump supporters because of these signs, in a jurisdiction where politics was not a protected class, I should expect that that case would fail, under current law. But just like SCOTUS is highly political right now, lower courts are, too, especially lower federal courts. It’s anybody’s guess as to whether a given judge would actually adhere to existing case law.
For the religious side of these signs, it gets interesting. As above, SCOTUS has ruled that a religious business owner can discriminate against customers based on the business owner’s “religious disagreement” with a position held by the customer, presumably where that disagreement does not overlap with a protected class.
And there’s the rub. Religion is a protected class, so it should be prohibited to discriminate against someone for their religious position. This, however, really tips the scales in favor of the religious: the religious business owner can discriminate on the basis of their own religious belief, but no one can discriminate against them because of that same religious belief. To me, this seems to tread very heavily on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …
“Congress,” in this context, has been interpreted by the courts to mean more generally “the government,” at any level. The recent SCOTUS ruling gives a religious business owner the right to discriminate on the basis of their religion, but the right of other people to discriminate against that business owner on the exact same basis remains prohibited. Again, I am not a lawyer, but that seems to be clearly in opposition to the Establishment Clause.
All of this is interesting, but none of it is cause for concern.
What is cause for concern is the foundation of Obergefell, which made same sex marriage legal in all of the US. That basis is that the only difference between opposite sex and same sex marriages is the sex of one of the people in the couple. An argument I recall from the time was that prohibiting same sex marriage is unconstitutional, because to do so would be discriminating against someone on the basis of sex - which is a protected class. However, that does not appear to have been mentioned in the court’s ruling.
No matter the reason, if it is unconstitutional to discriminate against same sex couples in the context of their getting married in the first place, it should stand to reason that it would be unconstitutional to discriminate against those same sex couples in any other context. Reason does not appear to be this court’s strong suit; they have decided that the rights of religious people to discriminate on the basis of their personal and individual beliefs “trumps” (pun intended) the rights of people (religious or not) to not be discriminated against.
This is a “canary in a coal mine” to overturn all manner of previous courts’ rulings: Obergefell (same sex marriage), Loving v Virginia (interracial marriage), Griswold (access to contraception), Lawrence v Texas (legalization of homosexuality), and certainly others.
Again, all of this seems to prioritize religion, which is in clear opposition of the Establishment Clause.
@Alexmitter@minimar The Supreme Court has just ruled that “expressive” businesses can discriminate against their customers. They did not pin down what “expressive” means.
The court opinion is 70 pages long, they define it multiple times. One example is:
“All manner of speech—from “pictures, films,
paintings, drawings, and engravings,” to “oral utterance
and the printed word”—qualify for the First Amendment’s
protections; no less can hold true when it comes to speech
like Ms. Smith’s conveyed over the Internet”
Essentially it’s already been established that the government can’t enforce rules on what products someone makes, but can enforce who they sell that product to (not disallowing protected classes). The state of Colorado was arguing that making websites was a standard product that could be modified to be sold to anyone, while ms Smith was arguing that each website was a unique product that had freedom of speech. The only thing the court decided was that websites should be considered speech, so they fell under the same rules that have already applied to paintings and songs, instead of the rules that apply to groceries and car sales
Sure, And the employee has full freedom of speech to say what they want during that sales pitch. They can’t be required to say anything they disagree with during the sales pitch. But they are required to sell the car to a gay customer just like they would to a straight customer
If we’re looking at the pitch itself as the product though, then the employee has freedom of speech to control what’s in the sales pitch, but not who the sales pitch goes to. The court ruling allows sellers to discriminate the content of their product, not to discriminate the recipient. so they wouldn’t have to give some sort of “gay sales pitch”, but they would have to give a sales pitch to gay customers.
European here so it may not be clear to me, but I thought discriminating against religious movements like the church or trump supporters is still illegal. Correct?
Political affiliation is not protected, religious affiliation is. It’s true that the Right has been doing their level best to politicise their religious feelings into public life, so that barring Trump supporters effectively excludes Evangelicals and a majority of Catholics. This may not be their desired outcome, but perhaps they shouldn’t have tied their religious sentiment to political causes.
A slight majority of Catholics supported Biden over Trump, actually. Probably because Biden is Catholic; a slight majority supported Trump over Clinton.
Religions are protected classes under the constitution, political groups are not. Free speech is also protected. The combination of these factors means that weather the shop keeper in OPs photo is breaking the law is entirely dependant on how you interpret the constitution, which is what the supreme court is supposed to do.
I think the shop in question could get in trouble over the church statement if they are not doing something “free speech” related, that is the only way the new ruling applies. Though what the free speech bit means is gonna depend on what the fedsoc six want, and they will steer it to the GOP always.
Yeah, religion is a protected class, so while they can probably refuse trump supporters the sign about churches is probably illegal. If this is some type of store that makes customized products then they can refuse to customize anything in ways they don’t agree with, but it’s totally illegal to refuse service just based on who the customer is
Political affiliation is not a protected class. You are permitted to discriminate based on politics. Religious affiliation is a protected class. You cannot discriminate solely on the basis of religion… Until now.
Conservatives love to discriminate, but their new rulings are also making it easier to discriminate against them.
It’s complicated and the implications and scope are not entirely clear.
The court stated that creative works such as web design qualify as a form of speech, and that the first amendment does not allow the government to use law to force creators to speak any message — especially one with which they disagree. Essentially, any business with something that might be considered speech as its product or service may be free to discriminate against protected classes. We aren’t sure how far this will extend in practice, but I expect many will test it.
In this case of this post, it depends on what is being sold.
Edit: wrote this before my coffee and thus neglected to point out what replies said: political affiliation is not a protected class in America and these signs are a bit misleading. See replies.
I am not a lawyer.
These signs are surely in response to the recent US Supreme Court ruling which allowed a website designer to refuse to make websites for same-sex weddings.
First, churches are religious; Trump supporters are political, and not religious. In the US, religion is a “protected class”, but political alignment is not. But traditionally, political alignment or part affiliation is not discriminated against, even if it is federall legal to do so. (Various states may have their own clauses making political alignment a protected class in certain contexts, I’m not sure.) Also important to this discussion is that sexual preference is not a protected class federally, although I know that many states have enshrined protection for sexual preference in their own state laws.
If a case were brought about discrimination against Trump supporters because of these signs, in a jurisdiction where politics was not a protected class, I should expect that that case would fail, under current law. But just like SCOTUS is highly political right now, lower courts are, too, especially lower federal courts. It’s anybody’s guess as to whether a given judge would actually adhere to existing case law.
For the religious side of these signs, it gets interesting. As above, SCOTUS has ruled that a religious business owner can discriminate against customers based on the business owner’s “religious disagreement” with a position held by the customer, presumably where that disagreement does not overlap with a protected class.
And there’s the rub. Religion is a protected class, so it should be prohibited to discriminate against someone for their religious position. This, however, really tips the scales in favor of the religious: the religious business owner can discriminate on the basis of their own religious belief, but no one can discriminate against them because of that same religious belief. To me, this seems to tread very heavily on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution:
“Congress,” in this context, has been interpreted by the courts to mean more generally “the government,” at any level. The recent SCOTUS ruling gives a religious business owner the right to discriminate on the basis of their religion, but the right of other people to discriminate against that business owner on the exact same basis remains prohibited. Again, I am not a lawyer, but that seems to be clearly in opposition to the Establishment Clause.
All of this is interesting, but none of it is cause for concern.
What is cause for concern is the foundation of Obergefell, which made same sex marriage legal in all of the US. That basis is that the only difference between opposite sex and same sex marriages is the sex of one of the people in the couple. An argument I recall from the time was that prohibiting same sex marriage is unconstitutional, because to do so would be discriminating against someone on the basis of sex - which is a protected class. However, that does not appear to have been mentioned in the court’s ruling.
No matter the reason, if it is unconstitutional to discriminate against same sex couples in the context of their getting married in the first place, it should stand to reason that it would be unconstitutional to discriminate against those same sex couples in any other context. Reason does not appear to be this court’s strong suit; they have decided that the rights of religious people to discriminate on the basis of their personal and individual beliefs “trumps” (pun intended) the rights of people (religious or not) to not be discriminated against.
This is a “canary in a coal mine” to overturn all manner of previous courts’ rulings: Obergefell (same sex marriage), Loving v Virginia (interracial marriage), Griswold (access to contraception), Lawrence v Texas (legalization of homosexuality), and certainly others.
Again, all of this seems to prioritize religion, which is in clear opposition of the Establishment Clause.
@Alexmitter @minimar The Supreme Court has just ruled that “expressive” businesses can discriminate against their customers. They did not pin down what “expressive” means.
The court opinion is 70 pages long, they define it multiple times. One example is: “All manner of speech—from “pictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings,” to “oral utterance and the printed word”—qualify for the First Amendment’s protections; no less can hold true when it comes to speech like Ms. Smith’s conveyed over the Internet”
Essentially it’s already been established that the government can’t enforce rules on what products someone makes, but can enforce who they sell that product to (not disallowing protected classes). The state of Colorado was arguing that making websites was a standard product that could be modified to be sold to anyone, while ms Smith was arguing that each website was a unique product that had freedom of speech. The only thing the court decided was that websites should be considered speech, so they fell under the same rules that have already applied to paintings and songs, instead of the rules that apply to groceries and car sales
@bric When you talk to a customer to sell them a car that speech is a unique product tailored to the customer
Sure, And the employee has full freedom of speech to say what they want during that sales pitch. They can’t be required to say anything they disagree with during the sales pitch. But they are required to sell the car to a gay customer just like they would to a straight customer
@bric You can’t sell a car without a sales pitch though
If we’re looking at the pitch itself as the product though, then the employee has freedom of speech to control what’s in the sales pitch, but not who the sales pitch goes to. The court ruling allows sellers to discriminate the content of their product, not to discriminate the recipient. so they wouldn’t have to give some sort of “gay sales pitch”, but they would have to give a sales pitch to gay customers.
I love that you mentioned the trump cult as a religious movement.