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Comment by Febra33 | Hacker News Reader

While sucky I don't see how any of this is illegal. To me it looks constitutionally correct and I don't want the government legislating this. If the company can refuse to bake a cake, it should be able to refuse any kind of service. Pretty sure this should be covered by the 1st amendment.

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If that’s the case, how far should they be allowed to go with a ban? What happens if they decide that fans of an opposing team shouldn’t be allowed to attend games? Or people who have been oppositional towards ownership or management, like the press. What about banning everyone who works for a vendor or partner because they are sour about a deal going bad or relationship ending? What about politicians or people with opposing views (I don’t believe that’s a protected class?).

Edit: updated to use examples that aren’t part of protected classes.

Half your examples would be flagrantly illegal. There's no comparing banning members of a rival company you don't like, and banning a race. These aren't even remotely similar from a legal point of view.

In many states you can legally discriminate against people based on politics. Not California however. Could be a very effective way to keep “that kind” out on both sides.

Yes, various states add more protected classes. Height and weight are protected classes in Michigan. I do wonder just how enforceable some of these are; if a bar in California bans somebody for wearing a nazi armband, I have a hard time imagining them losing a lawsuit about it.

Regardless, I don't think there's any state in which affiliation with an employer is a protected class. You can't compare this to race or sex, which are protected classes on the federal level, in every state.

Fair. I updated my comment to be more specific and exclude people who are part of protected classes.

>If the company can refuse to bake a cake,

If you are referring to the Masterpiece Cake suit from Colorado, I'm pretty sure that the cake maker won on a technicality: table single member of Colorado's ruling authority said something religiously discriminatory against the cake maker which made their ruling discriminatory.

The general question of "can a private cake maker restrict who he makes cakes for" is still unresolved (legally, in the US)

Admittedly the current website-maker might be more accurate

But we decided companies must bake cakes, didn't we?

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the baker, assuming you're referring to this case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

Don't confuse the issues. A major difference between the parallels you draw is the concept of a protected class [1]: a group which has been granted specific legal protections because of a long history of widespread discrimination. Or do you think it is also OK for the baker to refuse to sell cakes to black people? That is what is in play in the bakery case.

The MSG thing is a completely different issue.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group

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