Hacker News Reader

Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

There is no law or constitutional provision in the US that says you can’t refuse to work with someone for their political views.

View on HN

It's kind of unfortunate. It's like there's free speech, but the reality is almost everyone needs to work to live, and by way of working, their freedom of speech is effectively revoked.

EEOC makes it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin; why can't political views and speech said outside of the workplace be a part of that?

Very slippery slope, friend. Practically anything can be construed as political views and/or speech. You're asking for a police state.

Free speech protects you from the government, not your peers.

In this case was there a contract between the player and Blizzard? Did this violate that contract?

The part of the contract they say was violated was that you cannot do anything Blizzard deems to have offended someone or bring you into public disrepute.

So, yeah, I'm pretty sure he violated that. And Blizzard's response has too. It's really just a catch-all trivial to violate provision.

A lawsuit doesn't depend on the law or constitution.

As a separate note, the player and hosts would likely be considered to be contractors, not employees.

A successful or even interesting lawsuit does in fact depend on the law.

If you try to sue someone for violating a law that doesn't exist, they will make a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and the judge will throw out the lawsuit.

idk man it sounds like discrimination to me.

Discrimination is not illegal except when it is discrimination against particular protected classes -- federally, this includes race/nationality/citizenship, religion, sex, age, disability, or veteran status. A private company is free to discriminate on the basis of political belief.

That's not to say it is right or acceptable, but it isn't illegal.

It's legal to discriminate as long as it's not a protected class.

There are some states, like CA, where discrimination based on political views is illegal, but it’s practically-speaking not too hard for an employer to find a more traditional performance reason that may be related to political views. Caveat: IANAL

Source: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri...

Even then, that refers to employees specifically, and the person in question is probably not a Blizzard employees.

Not all types of discrimination are illegal - in particular, the GP is stating that refusing to do business with people of a certain political leaning is not illegal.

US law protects against discrimination for protected groups (race, religion, age, etc.). Political views are not a protected group.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com