“Deliberately misgendering a transgender person isn’t just a matter of opinion, and it’s not simply ‘disrespectful, discourteous, or insulting.’ Rather, it’s straight up harassment.”
-Scott Wiener
#freespeechmatters 23.07.2021
Here’s an obvious legal decision regarding the First Amendment that will likely upset the oversensitive. California’s Third District Court of Appeals ruled that a state statute requiring nursing home staff to use the preferred pronouns for their trans and nonbinary residents violates the First Amendment. The decision was unanimous and only pertained to the compelled speech provision. The Court upheld the provision in the law requiring nursing homes to place transgender patients in rooms that match the gender they identify with.
If you can’t see why this is a clear violation of the First Amendment, then you need to open your eyes a bit. The state of California was compelling, by law, which is by force, nursing home employees to use language they may not agree with. Those infuriated by the decision want deliberately mislabeling people to be viewed as a form of harassment. However, people seem to forget that “disrespectful, discourteous, or insulting” speech is still free speech.
Where are all my “private business” people at? Not too long ago, you were praising the power of private companies to make changes that the government cannot make. Couldn’t nursing homes require their employees to refer to their patients by their preferred pronouns? If the nursing home doesn’t have said policy, couldn’t you choose to patronize another nursing home?
Why was this even in law in the first place? People seemed to be understanding how capitalism works. If you don’t like what the brand stands for, fund their competition. Requiring, by law, people to use terms they disagree with is an overreach of government. They’re not the polite police and they’re not our parents. They think they’re going to preach morality with all the blood on their hands? Who’s listening? The court’s decision wasn’t “misguided.” It was the textbook First Amendment response.
Who did the law protect, really? Do transgender people feel more free because the nursing home staff is required by law to refer to them by their preferred pronouns? All a law like this does is create a new category of criminals. This didn’t change people’s minds. They didn’t all of a sudden became more tolerant of the transgender community. They were being forced by law to say what makes you feel comfortable. Trampling on human rights to progress certain rights isn’t going to fly, especially in courts fluent in constitutional law.
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