Can you imagine how it would be if every contract you sign had a "I own you now, no backsies"?
I see you’re confused about the concepts. You’re mixing “things that are legal (sometimes)” (smoking, but not on the plane) and “rights that you have all the time” (freedom of speech, even on a plane). Your employer can’t take your kidney because your contract says you must give one if you’re late to work even if giving away a kidney is legal. But you can still agree to give it if you want to.
If you have the same rights given by law then you can’t have any restrictions on those rights that aren’t in the law. Your rights have the same restrictions they always had and a contract can’t add a couple more. So you have your freedom of speech that a contract can’t take away, the law already defines the restrictions. But a restriction to smoke in the bathroom, which was never your right to begin with, is fine because the law never gave you the right to smoke in a plane bathroom.
You have your rights or you don’t. Calling this a technicality is a lame cop out.
Now you could argue (but you didn’t) that “broadcasting” the word “bomb” on a plane doesn’t constitute free speech. You’re not allowed to yell this at a concert either, it depends if broadcasting (not reading the BT spec to see who initiates the communication) a BT name and shouting are equivalent. But I can’t imagine saying “free X, screw Y” is anything but free speech for anyone not on Y’s payroll. A contract can’t put a restrictions on expressing opinions without them already existing in the law. Do you think there’s a law that says “free to state your opinion except on planes”?
The reason you can't give away your kidney in an employment contract is because there is a specific law banning that: the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, which bans transferring a human organ in exchange for valuable consideration.
For example, at home, I'm free to walk around nude and scream.
On a plane, I'm not.
On planes in general, many people jump nude for their 100th skydive - the original and best video of this has been scrubbed from youtube, but a quick search shows others.
Often screaming is included.
But if you want to f$ck around and find out, I'm sure it will make for a fun "How I Ended Up On the No Fly List" story.
It's a tale as old as the USA
Long story, short version - it doesn't always involve sex and isn't always restricted to toilets.
More US censorship. Nude skydiving, terrible. Indepth reviews of how to kill things with insane levels of weaponry? Featured video time.
>>this is even written somewhere in the contract between you and the airline that you agreed on
What I wanted to say is that you'll never give up any civil liberties because of a contract alone. If the contract can take those away it's because a law never gave them to you in those circumstances in the first place, so you never had them to begin with.
I just wanted to make it clear that you cannot agree to give up something that the law gives you. If the law doesn't give you something, you have nothing to give up.
Freedom of speech is the peak of this. People think it means "I can say whatever I like wherever I like". But that's not what it is. The government cannot make laws curtailing speech (though, it does... enforcement and interpretation don't line up with the original intent). You can, however, sign an NDA which curtails your speech. A business can kick you out for saying something they don't like. An employer can fire you for saying "poodle" one too many times.
And that's what we are dealing with around airlines. They absolutely can kick you off the plane and ban you for almost any reason. For what you say, wear, or because they don't like how tall or short you are.
The law really only protects a few things. Your race, your gender, your religion. Everything else is fair game for a private institution to discriminate against. They can kick you off a plane because you are a journalist. They can kick you off because you won't quarter soldiers. They can kick you off because you don't submit to a search of all your property.
> The law gives very few liberties.
> Freedom of speech is the peak of this.
Don't confuse positive and negative rights[0]. Freedom of speech is something that can only be taken away. It is never something that can be given to you.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
That is nonsense. "Freedoms" and "rights" are inherently social constructs. What does it even mean to say you "innately have" freedom of speech? That is a borderline religious claim, like saying you innately have a soul.
That's incorrect. In fact this is exactly what all contracts do.
Similarly, it's entirely possible to enter into a contract limiting your freedom of speech.
The entire point of a contract is to promise to do, or not to do, something that you could have freely chosen to do or not to do under the law without any contract.