If I own a home, I can choose who can come in. If I want to descriminate against young people, old people, green people, purple people, or people with bad hair, that is my right, it’s my property.
However, if I own a business, for some reason, this is changed. Now I am forced to hire and serve people that I don’t want to. What I don’t like about those people is irrelevant - if it’s racial, age, sex, or religious descrimination… or if I just don’t like the shoes their wearing, it’s all the same. The right to descriminate who I want to be on or use my own property is taken away at my business.
Why is this different from my home?
For reference, I support non-descrimination policies in the public sector. But I believe that I, as a property owner, should have the right to descriminate any way I wish to with that property.
But what if the business is privately-owned? What if, say, SenorBeef opens up a small tax-preparation business out of his home? Is he then required to hire any qualified applicant who comes along, or is he allowed to pick and choose?
What if it’s not a business, and he’s simply looking to hire a companion?
Must Mr. Beef. then, invite people into his own home, whom he would not generally invite, simply because they want him to give them money?
Businesses are regulated. If you’re filing taxes and claim business expenses, have registered your business w/the state, collecting taxes, claiming exemptions etc. it makes it a ‘public’ business.
An exception is a family owned business where they can choose to hire only family members.
The difference is that your business is (presumably) open to the public. Under the Equal Rights Act of 1964, you cannot discriminate against people in public accommodations:
42 USC sec. 2000(a). This enactment affirmed as constitutional in Heart of Atlanta v. United States, 379 U.S. 241, 85 S. Ct. 348, 13 L. Ed. 258 (1964).
I understand that it’s the law, what I was looking for was someone who advocated the law and could present justification for it.
Businesses are public, in a sense, but they’re still ultimately private property.
I take this as an instance of the government gettings it’s paws into something it shouldn’t be. If a business is, for whatever reason, descriminating against a group or individuals, and people object to this, they have the free choice to boycott that business.
Instead, though, we decided to let the government get it’s paws in yet another issue, and decide that we can’t descriminate who can work in or receive services on our property.
I’m asking someone to justify that to me, since it seems like a case of 60s reform feel good bullshit, and a further weakening of property rights, to me.
Whether the business is privately-owned or not doesn’t matter; the question is whether it is a place of public accommodation – i.e., open to the public.
How about the simple pragmatic reason that the days when there were separate lunch counters for whites and coloureds led to an intolerable state of affairs that we don’t want to re-occur?
So? Just because you own something doesn’t mean you have the unlimited right to use it however you like in every case. When your rights conflict with others’, then some balancing between the two must be struck. Congress determined that the negative societal impact of discrimination (most specifically at that time, racial discrimination) outweighed the right of owners/operators of public accommodations to only serve whom they’d like.
The fact that, say, white people, might not object to the discrimination of businesses they patronize against black people (and therefore would not boycott) does not change the negative societal impact of the discrimination.
It *is[//i] a weakening of property rights. Because your right to serve whom you want does not outweigh the rights of others to be free from discrimination in businesses open to the public. Property rights, while extremely important in the U.S., are not inviolate or paramount, and can and are impinged upon when reason exists to do so.
Bottom line is that all people in our society have rights - life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
When rights conflict (I have a right to liberty, however, if I’ve just murdered my next door neighbor 'cause I didn’t like the music he played, I’ve lost that right, since the neighbor had a right to live), a balance needs to be achieved.
a property owners right to manage their own property however they deem pleasurable ends when it becomes a public entity, which a business is.
If you wish to have a party at your home, you’re free to invite whomever you please into your home, refusing to invite minorities.
actually, as a business owner you’re allowed to discriminate, just not on racial, ethnic, gender, height, weight basis. (some jurisidictions may add other categories)
These laws were considered necessary to overcome 100 years of racial discrimination, Jim Crow, etc. If one business discriminates against a certain group, they can always go elsewhere. However, when the preponderance of businessess discriminate against them, they need some kind of remedy.
It is unfortunate that these laws reduce the freedom of the business owner.
The situation, and legislation in Sweden is a bit different, but I still think there are some things that are similar.
Typically, you cannot discriminate if you own a retail store or some kind of restaurant. But how about a law firm? We kind just stroll into their office and browse. Even public buildings have security guards.
Some very exclusive stores only open by appointment.
And most over Europe, and I believe the US as well, enforce the “no-shirt, no smoking, no eating, no rollerblading” attitude.
Without saying that discrimination is right (which I don’t think), it appears to be confined to certain types of business, and concern gender/race/religion.
The Gaspode, antidiscrimination policies address gender, race, religion, and disability because historically there has been widespread animosity towards whole groups of human beings based on those factors. Which I’m sure you know. You make a good point about how we can’t just stroll into any building we want, however–which is in some cases classism, another kind of discrimination.
Well, for one, our society almost went down the drain with the kind of apartheid we had before the 50s and 60s.
If you like a society in the midst of continual civil war, then your way is fine.
The society under the leadership of Truman, Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon with the support of congress and the Supreme court changed our laws and their interpretation. There is no other reason against your reasoning - other than it led to very divisive and dangerous consequences for our society.
IIRC, the legal justification in the U.S. is that the Constitution gives the federal government the right to regulate interstate commerce, and over time the definition of “interstate commerce” has been broadened to include pretty much any commerce at all.
You missed Ike. While he is not among my pantheon of heroes, he very seriously took specific Federal actions to guarantee the rights of all citizens. (Certainly, more than Nixon who went along with a few things to avoid having vetoes overridden by Congress.)
I’m in business and I don’t quite understand your (pardon the expression) “beef”. I sell real estate and I cannot (and should not) discriminate based on race, creed, color etc. I can (and do) discriminate against those who have neither the money nor means to purchase the items I am marketing for sale or lease. I discriminate against people who want me to list commerical property for more than it is worth as this is a waste of my time and theirs. I discriminate against incompetent appraisers and attorneys by not giving them any business or referrals. In my jurisdiction, if I am a landlord I can legally discriminate against college kids and refuse to lease to them even if they have the means to pay.
You are not “forced” to hire anyone. You are required to exercise some degree of discrimination when it comes to hiring someone you think would be appropriate for your business with respect to their skill set(s) and the way they present themselves. You can refuse service if your established service criteria are not met (no shirt, no shoes etc etc)
If, however, your choice of whom to serve or hire starts getting into criteria that is not (even giving you generous latitude in your defined critera) remotely logically or functionally germane to the job or service your are providing, then you are being bigoted and should be constrained in your bigotry in furtherance of the goal of a just society and the rule of law.
You are in the public sector as an economic actor. How on earth did you get the idea that owning a business is in any way a “private” issue. It hasn’t been since time began. Like it or not the ownership of a small business in a modern capitalist economy (and before) touches so many aspects of public sector policy that the two are inextricably intertwined.
It would help if you would outline specifically, just what basis (other than a capricious whim) that you desire to discriminate along? Height, weight, sexual orientation, body odor, physical incapacity, bad skin, flat feet, not peppy enough? All these are valid and legal categories for discrimination depending on the job involved. What groups do you want to withhold your valuable employment opportunities and services from?