[shard972]

> A wave of legislation, introduced in more than two dozen states, would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors.

I would hate to live in such a world where such thing would be considered illegal but ok.

> say individuals can cite their personal religious beliefs to refuse service to a customer or resist a state nondiscrimination law.

So? I don't see how this is a problem, as a business owner you are allowed to discriminate against who you do and do not want to be your customers. It happens all the time and to religious people themselves when they are boycotted by LGBT groups.

> Legislation being considered in Texas would strip the salaries and pensions of clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples

If we start with the premise that we need to be afraid of every considered bill then I don't know how you could ever not be afraid these days. Just simply a bill being considered doesn't mean anything.

> They go against the very principles our nation was founded on, and they have the potential to undo decades of progress toward greater equality.

The US was founded on principles of freedom of expression and association. The freedom to associate is also the freedom to not associate, only Tim skips over all that.

> America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business.

Really Tim? All forms of discrimination? What world do you live in?

> This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t a religious issue. This is about how we treat each other as human beings. Opposing discrimination takes courage.

Except it is political (legislation), it is about religion (Freedom of association for religious reasons) and NO, it doesn't take courage to say what apparently the whole business community believes according to you Tim.

[pstuart]

> The US was founded on principles of freedom of expression and association. The freedom to associate is also the freedom to not associate, only Tim skips over all that.

So freedom for a business to not associate with anybody who is not white is ok?

[xnull2guest]

It is not okay.

But it's also not something that is (ought to be) under the juris prudence of the law.

[ubernostrum]

Fun story:

There's a thing you can do with real estate called a "restrictive covenant". Basically this means that as part of the agreement to sell a piece of property, you attach a rider like "but the purchaser isn't allowed to do X with the property, and must pass this restriction on to future purchasers".

This is pretty basic and pretty well established to be legal. For example, people sometimes use restrictive covenants on land they want to ensure is preserved/undeveloped.

Back in the day, though, many people used this to enforce racial segregation. There would be a restrictive covenant along the lines of "Purchaser agrees never to sell the property to a black person, and to pass this restriction on to future purchasers".

This came up in court eventually during the era of the civil rights movement, and the US Supreme Court took an interesting approach (Shelley v. Kraemer, for anyone interested in the full details): restrictive covenants which restrict sale according to race are legal, but unenforceable. Private individuals are free to discriminate as much as they want, but the government, which is legally bound not to discriminate, cannot intervene to enforce it, since doing so would require the government to take part in the discrimination (which is illegal/unconstitutional).

[xnull2guest]

That is a fun story, and a great example of a deeper analysis of the sort you aren't going to get from Cook. Thank you for sharing it. :) It would be interesting to see whether there is an application of this to hiring practices (I don't see a clear way this could be done).

[kimdouglasmason]

"a deeper analysis of the sort you aren't going to get from Cook"

It's nice to see that you're now putting words into (or removing them from) people's mouths. How presumptuous.

[xnull2guest]

This is a prediction - Cook can prove the statement wrong. I did not add nor remove words from anyone's mouth.