| > I'm not sure "free association" applies to employment. If someone chooses not to have any friends that aren't the same race as themselves, racist as that might be, it's not illegal. > But if they start a business they cannot filter either customers or employees based on race; in that sense they aren't free to choose who to associate in a business sense. This is not an argument that businesses don’t have free association rights; this is an argument that they have limits that the state has a compelling interest in. This argument is like saying that we don’t have free speech rights because there are laws against incitement. It’s obviously silly; “free” never meant “without any limits whatsoever” in either case. Furthermore, while I agree it wouldn’t be legal to make employment decisions based on protected characteristics, forcing businesses to keep nazis on the payroll against their will strikes me as both absurd and a socially undesirable outcome. > I wouldn't say firing someone is merely an "expression" of speech, it's also the ending of an actual contract. Given the nature of at will employment, this actually weakens your argument. I’d also consider terminating someone for their behavior to be a matter of free association, not free speech. I thought I’d made that clear. |
You don't FA with coworkers because you don't (generally) get to decide who to work with, except in the sense of quitting.