Originally Posted by
christiefan915
The article was written by RW favorite Andrew Napolitano. Don't know if you read it but here's what I was talking about.
"At a rally in Alabama last month, Trump aggressively attacked the practice of taking a knee. He argued that it was so disrespectful to the American flag and the national anthem that those who had taken a knee should be fired from their jobs...
When the players union backed up these silent expressions of political opinions, it argued that all of its members have a constitutional right to express themselves in uniform in their workplace. Do they? The short answer is that it depends on where the players are when they take a knee...
Expressive conduct — lawful behavior that offers a political opinion — is the constitutional equivalent of free speech. So interfering with expressive conduct or commanding its cessation in conformity to management's political or patriotic views constitutes interfering with speech. May employers do that?
In states where expressive conduct in the workplace is protected, employees may express themselves as long as they do not materially interfere with the business of the workplace. In states without that employee protection, they may not do so.
However, even in the states that lack the employee expression protection, if management's instructions to conform require conformance on property that the government owns, such as a publicly owned stadium, then management is treated constitutionally as if it were the government. Just as the government cannot interfere with speech to suppress its content or to compel conformity, neither may team management when teams play on government-owned land...
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