Um, ya think just because the authors of the Constitution mentioned only Congress in the Constitution, they thought the states or in this case, the cities should be allowed to abridge the freedom of speech? It would seem pointless to forbid censorship at the federal level if the states and cities were allowed to get all censorious over every little thing. What do you think was the intent of the First Amendment, if not to forbid censorship generally?
Bricker was just trying to play Socrates. He knows full well that the first amendment applies to the states because of the fourteenth amendment.
Actually, that’s precisely what they thought. It wasn’t until the passage of the 14th ammendment that the limits of the Constitution were applied to the state as well as the federal government.
Bricker, if you seriously intend this thread to be an attack on the whole notion of incorporation of the rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights in the concept of “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, I think you should state so somewhat more directly.
I might also add, just how do you define “liberty” then? Exactly what do you think a state is precluded from doing without providing you due process as a result of the use of the word “liberty?”
And IF you intend to attack the incorporation principle, then what do you intend to do when some bright bunny rightly points out that the evisceration of the “privileges and immunities” clause was long overdue for correction?
And are you saying that states can abridge the so-called “freedom of speech” anytime they want to, without any federal consequences? Does the same apply to the religion issues? Is Utah free to discriminate against non-Mormons all it wants, subject only to the provisions of the Utah state constitution?
Well, you had said:
Make up your mind. Are you worried about what the text says or what what the intent is?
Or are you going to mention the intent when it suits your point and the text when it suits your point?
I hadn’t planned the thread to take this precise direction. But I did wish to rebut the suggestion that I was adopting a results-oriented approach here because I liked the results.
I think the state, in its role as employer, is free to do plenty of things that it is not free to do in its exercise of plenary police power. Your questions seem to be lumping the state’s actions together without regard for which hat its wearing when it takes them.
If Earl Warren was still alive, this probably would have turned out differently.
Why? He retired five years before he died. He could be out on the links with the senior senior circuit and he would still have no effect on current judicial decisions. (He was also not the driving force behind most of the personal liberty issues decided by his court, although once persuaded on those issues, he had the political finesse to see that the decisions pushed by the more civil-liberty-oriented members got a lot of majority decisions.)
Ah, so what you are mutating the thread to is a discussion of “state action” as including state qua employer v. state qua legislator. But that, again, changes the OP from: commercial speech isn’t worthy of the same protections as political speech, or states should be able to hire/fire without worrying about anything other than discrimination against protected classes, to states aren’t “states” when they are employers. Mind you, there is an important difference there, because if the state is not a “state” when it is an employer, then protection for protected classes only exists under federal statutory law, or any state statutory law applicable, and not federal constitutional issues (which, by the way, you appear to have some difficulty with anyway, given that some of those constitutional issues regarding “protected classes” are not inherently part of the Fourteenth Amendment’s actual language). Is this where you wish to take the thread? 
You’ve been whooshed. The idea of being both a cop and a pornstar reminded me of a famous Simpsons dialogue:
Marge: Do you want your son to grow up to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or a sleazy male stripper?
Homer: Can’t he just do both, like the late Earl Warren?
Marge: Earl Warren was never a stripper!
Homer: Now who’s being naive?