Even though it’s a privately held business, it rents space on university grounds and I would think there are stipulations in the lease that would prohibit discriminatory policies.
Let’s turn up the magnitude and see if the reaction would be the same…
For example: What if the cashier had refused to assist a member of the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team claiming they offended her?
I don’t know what’s in the lease, but I will say that the college has if the college has such policies in the lease, then the store is obligated to comply to them and compel their checkers to as well, since it signed the lease. This doesn’t apply to stores in general, of course.
And yes, if a store wants to ban all female basketball players, or all women without burkas, or all men, or all children under the age of 21, then the store has every right to refuse business to anybody it wants (barring interference by lease agreements and local law).
Baloney. Restaurants are prohibited by the The Civil Rights Act of 1964 from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. You may not pick and choose who you wish to sell to.
Hm, sec 201(b)(2) says you can’t get away with being demonstrably racist, colorist, religionist, or nationalist.
However you can still throw somebody’s butt out for their political opinion, it seems…
If I was a retail employer, I’d tell my cashiers to serve whoever comes through the door or take a hike. I guess a store has a right to set its own policy, but refusing to serve a Zionist is unfomfortably close to refusing to serve a Jew, IMO.
That depends. The t-shirt could be construed as an expression of national origin, if the wearer was Israeli.
It’s a collective. The Cashier’s are not necessarily employees but likely to be co-owners. I think from the perspective of the University the collective is a value added service and that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to try and extract a member of it for being a jerk, so they just said that they must abide by a certain code of conduct to remain on the University Campus. I am sure the Collective had a long night of consensus building and discussions about cultural sensitivity until the offending party was harangued into conforming to the status quo while everyone extremely respected their political views and right to express them.
According to Bricker and Fisher, the university does have a code barring discrimination based on political beliefs.
I wonder if the university would discriminate against me if I expressed that Jews are the source of all evil and should be eradicated so that we can all return to a Paradisical Eden.
You could describe that as a political belief, but I don’t think they’d buy it.
So you are saying they would discriminate by arguing that it’s not a political belief?
This seems like enough of a stretch to be disputable, in the highly unlikely event that the store was dedicated enough to its Freedom Of Prejudice to fight this all the way to any authority that would care about the fine points of the law.
If that’s the case then this particular cashier was putting the shop at risk of having their lease terminated, and probably shouldn’t have done it.
In general, though, my position still stands - excepting in the specific cases proscribed by law (such as by The Civil Rights Act of 1964) you can still deny service to anyone you like. So: political activists, women*, tall people, people who smell funny, people who have been unaccountably rude to you, people who don’t have shirts or shoes, people who only have checks…
*unless there’s another law that covers this, which actually wouldn’t surprise me.
This collective must be a fairly big operation if it can afford to keep extra personnel on hand so that Cashiers Of Conscience can refuse to serve people with certain political beliefs.
At least that’s what it’s letting itself in for by agreeing to have alternate cashiers available to serve the undesirables.
Some groups* could have a field day screwing around with the collective, sending in members at various hours to buy stuff while wearing apparel expressing objectionable sentiments (“Close The Mexican Border”, “Buy Blood Diamonds”, “I Love My Humvee”** etc.), and then complaining to the University if they can’t get timely service.
*for some reason, campus Republicans come to mind.
**the other day I saw a Humvee with the license plate “10 MPG”. I wonder if they ever have trouble getting service at the drive-through…
In the days of Jim Crow laws, everyone knew what the signs saying We reserve the right to refuse service… meant. After the Civil Rights Act, those signs came down pronto.
I don’t know where you live, but I haven’t seen one of those signs in the South or in my travels in the East since the 1960’s.
When you do see the sign, keep in mind that no matter how much you like the notion, it’s a lie. They can’t refuse service for just any reason. The other fellow will end up owning his business.
Come to think of it, just put “Bush Republican” on a t-shirt and I might have to take a sudden break. YMMV = You Made Me Vomit
I hope it gets keyed.
Zoe I’ve seen them and I was born in 1977 didn’t learn to read until about 1982.
I think they would argue hate speech is not a protected form of political belief. Perhaps you would consider that discrimination.
It is discrimination, based upon the strictest sense of the word. Like when I choose Whiskey I discriminate between Marker’s Mark and Jack Daniels depending on whether I want something a little smoother or something a little sweeter.
However, lets avoid actually taking this topic seriously, it doesn’t warrant it. 
The fact that it appeared in the Washington Post is kind of hilarious if you ask me.
You’ve just gone to the wrong places. I live in the rural part of the northwest, far enough away from the coast that we don’t have liberals here. Or much of anyone else besides caucasian republicans. We don’t have to be racist; there’s not enough non-us here to be a threat. (I feel like I should put a smiley here, but there isn’t one that expresses c’est la vie.)
You misunderstood my post. I should have been more clear. My point was that you have the responsibility not to patronize the business if you disagree with their policy. What I am trying to say is that responsibilities come along with rights. If you feel the coop is worth supporting, then you have the responsibility to do that, as well.
So would I, but as you say, I see that the store has a right not to feel the same way.