While I understand the desire to be allowed to carry a weapon to work, or at least have it within your vehicle, this guy is substantively right. Or is he?
If it is private property it is absolutely within the owner’s discretion to determine what is permitted within their property. But…
I suppose the conflict in this is the right of public access. Can the owner of, say, a restaurant, forbid such possession, or does that fall under the purview of class discrimination? The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids discrimination on the basis of race in areas of public access, one would think that the 2nd Amendment carries even more weight in that regard. As it stands now in some states they can ask you to leave, and failure to obey that request can result in a charge of trespassing (Cite, with painfully large writing-my apologies). While that might seem a reasonable compromise, it is little different in substance from asking an African-American to leave due to the desires of the owner. That’s a bit more thorny, in my opinion.
But if a company that allows limited access to its facilities wants to ban guns from the premises, they absolutely should be able to. Say GM wants to ban guns from their buildings and parking lots. Sure, it is an inconvenience for a properly licensed gun owner to leave it at home, because they may have things to do after work, but it cuts deep into rights of property owners to forbid them to make decisions on their own lands. That is the very antithesis of what gun owners claim for themselves via the Castle Doctrine.
As with all things gun-related, this is complicated. But I’m largely with the author of the article on this, with one exception. Private property is exactly that, and the decision about whether guns should be permitted should not be encroached upon by the government in this case. Places of public access, however, are a different matter, and the government has the right to legislate how it sees fit.
Seems pretty ripe for a good ole’ Supreme Court ruling. I would agree that the Bill of Rights applies to govt’ power primarily. It’s pretty well established that an employer can limit your right to speech and can violate the 4th by looking through your desk or company issued laptop at will, among a wide variety of other things that a gov’t could never get away with.
The gun rights should fall into the same boat. Don’t like your employer’s policy? Quit and find somewhere that’s more agreeable.
The fight over that would be most entertaining, but the precedent seems pretty clear.
Are gun owners really a “class”? I am not a lawyer, but I thought certain groupings of people constitute “protected classes” and certain groupings don’t.
How would saying “restaurants can’t exclude members of the class of ‘gun owners’” be any different than saying “restaurants can’t exclude the class of ‘shirtless people’”? I guess all those “No shoes/shirt, no service” signs have to go.
Yes, obviously there isn’t a Constitutional Amendment that protects “the right to go topless”, but I also don’t really see anything in the Second Amendment that says “gun owners are a class protected from discrimination by private entities”. As you said, it is a restriction on government power. I also don’t think the Civil Rights Act says anything about gun owners.
Maybe this is a better example: The Constitution contains a prohibition against restricting free speech. But couldn’t a restaurant still choose not to serve someone who was loudly telling everyone around him “The food here stinks!”? The fact that the First Amendment protects free speech doesn’t mean “people who insult the chef” are a protected class.
Yes and no. A private individual, for example, does not have to respect free speech rights of others on his or her private property. What the Civil Rights Act does is prevent discrimination in certain areas against a constitutionally protected class. Absent Equal Protection, I am not sure it would be a constitutional law.
While owning a gun is a constitutionally protected right, gun owners are not a protected class. That’s what makes the difference. As a private property owner, I can refuse you permission to exercise your rights there; the constitution only forbids the government from preventing you. What the government has chosen to do in the Civil Rights Act (permitted by the 14th Amendment) is to prevent individuals exercising the right to exclude others from their property (provided the property is a public accommodation) if such exclusion is done on the basis of race.
Congress could pass a law preventing private property owners from excluding those carrying guns. I don’t think such a law would pass constitutional muster as I don’t see what hook it could be hung on. But the default position is one of private individuals having the power to exclude.
I certainly don’t think it is only for courts to decide - legislators have their role here as well. And property rights apply all over the place - a vehicle owner could certainly press a claim against companies conducting searches of cars in company parking lots for firearms on pure property rights grounds alone, without touching the Second Amendment.
Seems to me if a state stipulated that a firearm in a locked trunk, or a locked container in a trunk, was off-limits for such a private-party search, such a law would be on pretty solid ground. And these sorts of laws have been passing at the state level lately.
Why should I be obliged to allow you onto my property if you won’t unlock your trunk? If you don’t want me looking in your trunk, get your car the hell off my land.
Well, but, as you said, what forbids discrimination on the basis of race in areas of public access is the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There’s nothing unconstitutional about a company discriminating on the basis of race in areas of public access. Likewise, Congress could probably pass a law forbidding private companies from banning guns in areas of public access, but there’s nothing unconstitutional about the action.
That’s not a good way to keep employees. Except maybe in secure locations, why should an employer be allowed to search an employee, their possessions, or their vehicle?
Patting you down at my front door might make me a crappy host, but I’m entirely entitled to kick you off my property if you don’t submit to it (or if you do, for that matter). I am not commenting on what policies may be wise or prudent for any given employer, just on what I understand to be their legal rights. Park out on the street instead of in the company lot and no one can legally search your vehicle without a warrant. Your 4th Amendment rights are the only relevant ones. Bring your vehicle onto my property, and that changes. Suddenly I have rights that are relevant too.
Wouldn’t a big sign by the driveway saying “Parking in our lot implies consent to our contraband rules” take care of that? If I want to park on the lot where I work, security is quite likely ask me to open the trunk for them to check. I’m free to say no, and they’ll tell me to park somewhere else. Does anyone really think I have a property rights case? (Not that filing that suit would do my career much good…)
No. Why would it do so automatically? We don’t permit entities to set rules at their whim in any other aspect of our society?
If a state decides to regulate certain aspects of parking lot maintenance, the people running such a lot should either comply or stop providing such a service. Just as in most areas of life, we shouldn’t expect that government would have nothing to say about it - even in such matters as to what searches a private entity may reasonably conduct.
I’m not sure that’s clear. While it’s certainly not a 2nd Amendment issue, and I’m not a lawyer, I seem to recall that employers do not have the right to search employees vehicles, even if it’s parked on their property. So just bringing my car onto your property does not change anything. You might have a right to say “no guns”, but you have no authority to poke around my stuff looking for one. And if the Florida court thingy is right, you don’t in fact have the right to ban firearms in vehicles.
I don’t know, the case could be made that those committing an act authorized by an amendment to the Constitution would be as much a ‘protected class’ as someone protected by the civil rights act. I’m on the side of the corporations in this deal, but it seems like a plausible arguement.
On the contrary, private entities set their own rules for behavior on property owned by them all the time. Many facilities I’ve worked in over the years, from steel plants to Air Force bases had obvious, posted rules about the search of you and/or your vehicle. Most would have a sign for visitors that would say, by coming on to the premises of XYZ Corp, you are consenting to a potential search of your vehicle or belongings, and if you worked for XYZ, you signed a waiver to allow them to search your vehicle while on their property. What’s more, if you were found in possession of something you were not allowed to have, I was allowed to hold you there until the police came, wherein you would be arrested (or, when at the AF base, I would arrest you) and hauled off. Now, that something HAD to be something belonging to the company. If I opened the trunk at the steel mill, and the blanket slipped off your bales of cocaine, the most I could do is call the cops and let you go, but if you had some scrap copper in there, well, that’s your bad luck.
My point was that the private entity didn’t have the only say. The other party also had a voice in the matter, and if that opinion were to be made law through legislative action, the company or landowner would have to deal with that as well. They would have to deal with that regardless of the opinion of the other entity.
These rules aren’t “automatic” as was posited above - if the state passes a law, the owners of the parking lots have to follow it.
That is correct. Certain groups have been identified as “protected classes”. However, that does not exempt other groups from protection as well simply because they have not been named. Specifying something does not necessarily exclude other things that may be implied.
The United States has a history of disallowing things via what is known as a public policy exception. In your example it falls under “health, safety and welfare”. Do guns specifically fall under that provision? The argument can be made either way.
Indeed, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not say anything about gun owners. However, the SCOTUS, in Heller, did provide for an individual right to keep and bear arms, with exceptions. Does this example fall within that?
I agree. That is why this is such an interesting discussion. The public policy exception with regard to the 1st Amendment is fairly well defined (see Brandenburg v. Ohio, the current Supreme Court standard), but the 2nd Amendment is relatively virgin territory, so it is generally up for grabs what sort of limitations are permissible.
It really comes down to this: does an Amendment to the Constitution trump all? The Supremes have never asserted an absolute right to anything, so I’m willing to accept that the 2nd Amendment will not be seen as absolute either, but what sort of limitations are permissible? I lean towards property rights in spite of my gun advocacy, but property rights are not absolute, either. So where’s the line?
Educate me here: doesn’t the 2nd Amendment say that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed? Not ‘infringed by the government’ but infringed full stop? So how can anyone prevent Americans from bearing guns wherever they wish?
First: it’s not “public access” that is the issue in civil rights cases, it’s whether it’s a “public accomodation”. Second: saying that gun owners are a “class” is twisting logic beyond the breaking point. You might as well say all Americans are a protected class because we all speak and the 1st ammendment protects speach.
Well, it seems to me that there’s already a consensus in our society that that the private property rights of businesses, employers, and other proprietors of public or semi-public areas are overridden by certain concerns of public fairness, non-discrimination, etc. A business isn’t like a private home: the owner of a bar can’t choose to allow smoking if local law says smoking in bars is illegal, and if the legislature or the courts say that a person’s Fourth Amendment rights apply to his or her vehicle when it is on somebody else’s parking lot, then it is so. If they further say that no employer can prohibit their employees from keeping guns in their cars while at work, then that is so, too.
This kind of regulation of employers and businesses is well in line with what is already accepted as part of the role of government, so I see no problem with it as far as that goes.
A person may have the right to bear arms, but they do not necessarily have a right to enter another’s property. But prior jurisprudence has held that the constraints in the Bill of Rights apply only to the federal government, and the Second Amendment has not yet had its test in court since the days of incorporation doctrine began. So, while incorporation seems likely, at the moment it has not yet been held to constrain even state governments, let alone any private individuals.