First Amendment is under attack. | Donor privacy defended. | Apple falls for SPLC charade. | Toward robot full employment. | Time to tackle occupational licensing.

August 19, 2017
Some want to take First Amendment protection away from hate speech. But protecting unpopular speech is the only reason the First Amendment exists. Santa Fe wants non-profits to choose between free speech and privacy, but the Rio Grande Foundation is fighting back. Apple is the latest to get fooled by the SPLC's "hate" designations. Minimum wage laws encourage companies to automate. There is a new idea on how to rein in unnecessary occupational licensing.
If you don't believe in the First Amendment for everybody, then you don't believe in the First Amendment. One reaction to the violence in Charlottesville has been to call for restrictions on hate speech. The New York Times published an op-ed by K-Sue Park urging the ACLU to judge First Amendment claims in the context of broader struggles for equality. Nick Gillespie writes that this position is not only contrary to the First Amendment, it would be bad news for the least powerful among us: "One way speech rights are under attack right now (as always) is the argument that they should not apply to disfavored speakers, who from Park's perspective include right-wing racists and people organized as corporations. By asking the ACLU to think about freedom of speech 'in a broader context,' she is actually asking the ACLU to abandon the principle altogether. The whole point of the principle is that it applies regardless of who you are or what you are saying. If the ACLU gave up its 'colorblind logic' and started using racial and ideological filters to pick First Amendment cases, it would no longer be defending freedom of speech; it would be defending the interests of particular social and political groups. "Freedom of speech does not require the 'level playing field' of Park's dreams. It is obviously true that wealth helps people get their messages across. So do fame, good looks, and verbal felicity. But those advantages do not render freedom of speech a nullity, any more than applying the Fourth Amendment to mansions as well as shacks or guaranteeing due process to rich as well as poor defendants makes those protections meaningless. To the contrary, legally guaranteed rights matter most to people without the social and political connections that might provide protection from official harassment." [Reason] Against such calls to reconsider free speech rights for hate groups, the ACLU has buckled. It announced that it would no longer defend "hate groups seeking to march with firearms." That's a tragedy, David French writes: "For all its flaws and inconsistencies in other areas, the ACLU had been one of the last well-resourced national legal organizations that were truly non-partisan in defending First Amendment freedoms such as the right to march and speak in Charlottesville. Indeed, a local ACLU chapter had defended the alt-right's liberties at that very protest. But now the ACLU's message was clear: lawfully exercise Second Amendment rights, and we'll turn our backs on your First Amendment freedoms. "The law already prohibits true threats, and there are an array of legal restrictions on the place and manner of 'bearing' arms depending on the jurisdiction and location. Under existing precedent, groups that engage in threats or violate local firearms laws face severe legal consequences. The ACLU's position, however, is that it will not represent a category of organizations that are completely compliant with the applicable laws. […] Thus, yet another negative result of last weekend's deadly violence is that both the First and Second Amendments are under increasing cultural pressure. Rather than focus on the actual violence that caused so much pain and harm last weekend, activists are renewing calls for so-called hate-speech restrictions, and they're increasing demands for restrictions on the right to bear arms. The ACLU is a key pressure point. Rights that don't enjoy a robust defense are not rights at all. The Constitution is not a self-executing document." [National Review] The ACLU's new stance isn't really about the Second Amendment. It's about finding a way to weasel out of defending the rights of people its membership does not like—without seeming to abandon its principles. Most rallies will have at least some people who legally carry firearms. (And after the events in Charlottesville, why wouldn't marchers carry a gun for self-defense?) That means the ACLU's new position allows it to decline to defend the rights of most groups it doesn't like. But if you aren't defending the principle for all, then you aren't defending the principle at all.   Your free speech or your privacy. Last year, the Rio Grande Foundation argued against soda taxes and the City of Sante Fe responded by demanding its donors. So, writes Paul Gessing, Rio Grande is suing for its First Amendment rights: "Literally the same day that we announced our public education campaign, the Santa Fe city attorney notified us that if we spent more than $250 on certain advertising tools that so much as 'refers to a clearly identifiable ballot measure within 60 days' of it being on the ballot, we would be compelled to hand over a list of our donors for publication on a government database. […] "As a 501(c)(3) organization under the IRS Code, the Rio Grande Foundation's donors — like Planned Parenthood's or the NAACP's — are not public information. In fact, back in 1958, the NAACP's right to keep its donor list private was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. "And while the Rio Grande Foundation's donors may not face such extreme threats were it forced to disclose its donors, there are plenty of politicians who would love to silence the Rio Grande Foundation, not to mention Planned Parenthood or other nonprofit organizations, by intimidating their supporters. "Ultimately, as the media reported, while we dutifully kept our outright expenditures below $250 as prescribed by law, the Rio Grande Foundation was deemed to be in violation of the law due to the aforementioned video and website. These were 'in-kind' donations to the Foundation, but because their value clearly exceeded $250, we were deemed to be violating the law. "We don't think that's right. We strongly believe that the First Amendment protects the speech in which we engaged relating to the soda tax measure. We also believe in respecting and adhering to donor privacy, as any donor to a 501(c)(3) has come to expect." [NMPolitics.net]   Apple falls for the Southern Poverty Law Center's charade. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple would donate $1 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center, match employees' donations to the group two-to-one, and make it easy for iTunes subscribers to donate to SPLC as well. Decades ago, the SPLC was a venerable organization that worked to counter the influence of the Ku Klux Klan and other racist organizations. But in recent years it has redefined the hate in its "hate group" designation in a way that both diminishes the danger of real hate and inspires intolerance and incivility in our public discourse. In short, as Katrina Trinko explains, SPLC has become part of the problem: "[T]he Southern Poverty Law Center doesn't just blast neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups as 'hate groups.' "It also smears groups like Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom, two socially conservative organizations that have bravely advocated traditional marriage, as 'hate groups.' "There is no equivalence between the actions and views of a KKK supporter and a traditional marriage supporter. "Yet that equivalence is exactly what the Southern Poverty Law Center's 'hate groups' list promotes, by listing groups like the American Nazi Party and Aryan Nations on the same list as Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that just won a case in front of the Supreme Court this year, and Family Research Council, a respected social conservative group." As Trinko points out, there are two well known cases of fans of the Southern Poverty Law Center using violence against conservatives: James T. Hodgkinson allegedly shot Rep. Steve Scalise in June, and Floyd Corkins shot Leo Johnson, a security guard at the Family Research Council, while attempting to gain access to the building to commit more mayhem. [The Daily Signal]   Humans need not apply: Joseph Lawler: "States that raise their minimum wages may put low-skill workers at risk of having their jobs automated, according to a new academic paper published Monday. "The study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that higher minimum wages are likely to lower employment in manufacturing jobs that can be performed by robots, and hit older, black, and female workers particularly hard. "The paper, which has not yet gone through the peer review process, was written by Grace Lordan of the London School of Economics and David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, one of the pre-eminent academic analysts of the minimum wage. […] "The paper warns that increases in the minimum wage 'will give incentives for firms to adopt new technologies that replace workers earlier.' "Using Census data to compare states with differing minimum wages and a dataset of jobs vulnerable to automation developed by MIT economist David Autor, the study published Monday finds that some workers 'are in fact quite vulnerable to job loss because of automation following a minimum wage increase.' "The study starts the clock at 1980, but the authors find some evidence that job losses stemming from automation spurred by higher minimum wages might be getting worse in more recent years, possibly because automation is getting better or because the minimum wage hikes are getting bigger. They speculate that in the years ahead, jobs like driving taxis or tending cash registers could be lost to automation." [Washington Examiner]   Toward reining in unnecessary occupational licensing: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah): "In 1950, fewer than 5% of U.S. workers had to be licensed for their jobs. Today, nearly one in three needs a license.  […] "Existing professionals in a given field control the board, licensing requirements and who enters and leaves the market. They use this power to shut out competition, drive up pricing or, worse, lock out innovative new market disruptors that threaten their way of doing business. "Further, since the boards often run with little oversight from state, they've become so rife with abuse that the Supreme Court has even begun to take notice. In 2015, the Court ruled that state licensing boards can be held legally liable for unfairly blocking competition after the North Carolina Board of Dentistry tried to prevent mall-based teeth-whitening services by requiring the procedure to be performed only by licensed dentists — despite the fact that countless Americans safely self-administer teeth whitening products at home every day. "Though the decision raised questions over whether it may make it harder for states to recruit knowledgeable citizens, who are often market participants, to volunteer to staff licensing boards, the Supreme Court's decision was a victory for American workers and consumers. More importantly, however, it gave Congress an opening to curb the worst excesses of these occupational licensing regimes. "Building on this decision, we introduced the Restoring Board Immunity Act. The bill uses the Court's decision to incentivize states to make necessary and long-overdue changes to their occupational licensing regimes by giving states two options: either bring the licensing boards under direct oversight of the state or create a way for citizens to challenge whether a given requirement is truly necessary for the public's health and safety." [Time]
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