• FlowVoid
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    1 year ago

    There are two rights that the courts have traditionally protected, the right to say (or not say) what you want, and the right to be free of discrimination.

    In this case, the two rights were in conflict. The court decided that the first one takes precedence.

    • vacuumflower@vlemmy.net
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      1 year ago

      That’s to be free of discrimination by the state, which usually will treat your obligations independently of your rights.

      While private discrimination is always something in the grey area. By private discrimination I mean both a banner saying “<any grouping at all> are not welcome here” and having face control (something quite normal for night clubs, and you’ll also pick your tenants if you rent out).

      • FlowVoid
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        1 year ago

        It’s not really a gray area. The Civil Rights Act explicitly prohibits discrimination against protected class by most businesses that are open to the public, like stores, restaurants, bars, and hotels.

        If you’re not a part of a protected class, or your particular business is not covered by the Civil Rights Act, then you are free to discriminate.

        So to take your example, if a bar said “Irish not welcome here” then they would absolutely be violating the law.

        The main change recently is that certain businesses that produce original expression, such as web designers, can no longer be covered by the Civil Rights Act because the court thought this would conflict with the First Amendment.

        • vacuumflower@vlemmy.net
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          1 year ago

          The whole idea of arbitrarily chosen protected classes means that it’s really really a gray area. It wouldn’t be, if the difference could be formulated logically.

          The Civil Rights Act

          Has nothing to do with what I’m talking about, just like any other piece of paper voted for. I’m talking about law being logically consistent without resorting to protected classes, special categories of population etc.

          The main change recently is that certain businesses that produce original expression, such as web designers, can no longer be covered by the Civil Rights Act because the court thought this would conflict with the First Amendment.

          And this is a good thing. I mean, there would be many other similar cases before that change. It’s just that they could be ignored before.

          Now, my idea of private discrimination is not “you walk into a restaurant, sit down, then a garcon says they don’t serve your kind here”. If a business presents itself like open to public in general, it should be, and otherwise it would be creating dishonest expenses for people thinking they could rely on it while they couldn’t, and this would mean compensations of various damages, both direct and moral. But there should be an option for a business to signal clearly that they deal with only specific categories of population (with those categories unambiguously defined).

          Funnily enough, this (because if we leave a loophole of “deciding for each individual customer at the moment of making a deal”, everybody is going to use it) breaks night clubs with their face control without breaking racist shops. But seems right for me.