Re: Freedom Forum report on the State of the First Amendment

[Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>]

>>> Umm, no, freedom doesn't work like that.  If you open a *private*
>>> establishment, you have the right, according to the constitution, to 
>>> deny *anyone* the right to enter or eat in your restraunt.

I don't see freedom of association listed anywhere there;
you might construe it as a "taking" or something, but it'd be a stretch.
Also, there was a really appalling court case in the 1890s
(Plessey vs. Ferguson), in which the Supremes ruled that states
could require segregation with separate but equal accommodations;
it was somewhat overturned by Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954,
but the idea that the government can tell you how to run your business
is long established (after all, we'd need much smaller governments
if they couldn't be interfering in business.)

>>Tell that to Denney's restaurants. (No, not in the United Fascist
>>States of Amerika you can't.)

>Apologies.  In *theory* you have those rights, on *paper*, you have those
>rights, but in *practice*, you're correct, the Government has power that
>it gleefully abuses, forcing others to comply w/ political correctness.
>
>I'd like some more info on this Denny's thing.

A Denny's restaurant in Maryland had two groups of customers
show up one day, one group black, one group white, both about 6-8 people,
both arriving at the same time, both groups out-of-uniform cops.
The white people got served promptly, the blacks got served
extremely late and rudely.  And sued, and won.

(I was mainly surprised that the white cops got served fast;
my experience in Denny's has almost always been slow bad service,
except for one restaurant in Pennsylvania that hasn't learned
how to act like a real Denny's :-)