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Whose Right to Refuse Service? Iowa's War Against Women, Trump Lies about China, Tuberville Cheats Veterans, Charles Barkley Defends LGBTQ+, Neil Young
Who Gets to Refuse Service for Personal Reasons?
Following a piece I recently wrote disapproving of the U.S. Supreme Court 6-3 decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, one of my subscribers responded with a very thoughtful comment:
Man, I love Kareem's writing so much, and agree so often, it's difficult for me to write something that disagrees, but here goes! :) I have always felt that it is okay for a person running a business to not accept business that would force them to go against their own personal religious beliefs. It's not okay to actively hurt, harm, name-call, restrict or actively go against someone just because you don't agree with how they live their legal, bill-of-rights given life. But simply not wanting to personally work on something that goes against your own religious beliefs is more like passive resistance, or possibly not wanting to go against a personal moral code. We don't all share the same moral codes, for sure, and the law should be what we use to keep us all from letting this get out of hand. To be clear, I am talking about sole proprietorships here, and not about large businesses with many employees. If an employee at a large business won't work on something for personal religious reasons, it's up to the company to find a replacement to do the work - and to handle how they deal with the employee who didn't want to do the work in the first place. Whew! There, I said it! :)
Like this subscriber (I’m not using their name to protect their privacy), I struggle with the dividing line between an independent businessperson’s right to choose who to work for and when that choice is detrimental to others’ civil rights.
Every time I go into a restaurant and see that sign “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” I get annoyed because they remind me of the “No Coloreds” signs in our segregationist past. Technically, businesses do have the right to refuse service—unless it’s a protected class. Protected classes in California include: race, color, religion, sex/gender, gender identity/gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, and ten other worthy categories.
However, that protection is about to change. The U.S. Supreme Court 6-3 decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, allows discrimination against same-sex couples, despite Colorado’s law designating them as a protected class. That certainly opens the door for further discrimination against other protected classes across the country based simply on a vague and convoluted interpretation of free speech.
Shouldn’t a private business have the right to refuse service to individuals representing something they personally disagree with? For example, should a web design business be able to refuse to create a website for Nazis based on political beliefs. And if that’s okay, then why not a Republican business owner refusing to serve Democrats? Should a Christian be allowed to refuse to serve Jews (or Muslims or Buddhists) because they have a religious objection?
The head spins with all the possibilities of discrimination based on personal biases.
A couple of years ago in San Francisco, a restaurant refused to serve three uniformed police officers because their guns made the staff uncomfortable (“Can They Do That? SF Restaurant’s Refusal of Cops Likely Legal”). They later apologized and admitted they overreacted. Still, they were within their legal, if not ethical, rights.
The problem is that, left to their own devices, some businesses will discriminate against a wide variety of people based on the owners’ personal biases. As a country, we see that behavior as a violation of others’ civil rights. We don’t recognize the freedom to discriminate as a right guaranteed under the Constitution—at least, until this crazy anti-American decision from the aggressively conservative Supreme Court.
“Religious beliefs” is a vast umbrella that covers a multitude of sins. Remember that the Bible was used to justify slavery (“How Christian Slaveholders Used the Bible to Justify Slavery”) and segregation (“Discriminating in the name of religion? Segregationists and slaveholders did it, too.”). Religions throughout history have justified the worst of human behavior, including torture, rape, child molestation, murder, and war. Today, religion is being used in the U.S. as an excuse to take away women’s rights, suppress children’s education, and promote other social ills.
While the balancing of everyone’s rights can cause tricky clashes, America has come down on the side of protecting those classes of people who are traditionally marginalized and discriminated against. We have learned from history that we can’t rely on people’s innate goodness to not discriminate because they often see themselves as the righteous party being discriminated against. That kind of prejudice is difficult to breach. That’s why we have to rely on laws that clearly and emphatically reject discrimination against protected classes.
Maybe that means somebody has to make a wedding cake with two women on the top. Or a website for a bar mitzvah. Or cater for a mixed-race couple. That’s a small price to pay to suppress rampant discrimination, which is much more harmful to individuals and to the country as a whole. It’s one small sacrifice for a person, one giant leap for humanity.
With every law we pass to protect the marginalized, we are striving to fulfill the promise of our Constitution. We are reaching to be the best people we can be and the best country we can be. After all, a democracy’s reach should exceed its grasp, or what’s a government for.
[I want to thank the subscriber I quoted above for sharing their thoughts. I also want to acknowledge another subscriber (whose name I also want to protect) for offering a much more nuanced explanation of the Court’s decision. The lively and intelligent exchanges in the Comments section give me a lot of joy. They are a large part of why I write this newsletter.]