By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints
Illinois progressives are all over the media congratulating themselves on passage of The Illinois Worker Freedom of Speech Act, signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday. It passed both houses in the General Assembly along strict party lines, with Republicans opposed.
It has nothing to do with worker freedom of speech, creates a nightmare for employers and is yet another measure by the state that flagrantly ignores the First Amendment’s right to free speech.
Under the Act, most every employer in the state faces mandatory fines of $1,000 per employee plus civil lawsuits if they discuss “religious or political matters” at meetings where worker attendance is mandatory.
Think about that – no discussions allowed on political matters.
So, say you work for a company that makes a renewable energy product of some kind. Your employer would be fined for a meeting discussing the importance of government subsidies for your product and your job . Likewise, a company making conventional gasoline powered vehicles could not tell its employees about the impact of government efforts to replace them with electric vehicle makers.
The list of similar examples is endless. Most every company today has matters pending in government that could impact the company, its capacity to hire people, how much it can afford to pay them and even matters outside of the company’s business that may be important to workers. Employers obviously should have the right to communicate their views on that and hope their workers will support them, and they do under the First Amendment.
Some companies are particularly political. Take a look, for example, at some of Google’s leaked “all hands meetings.” Many brim with discussion of political matters. Here’s a clip from one where Google execs melted down, some choking up, while discussing Donald Trump’s election and how they should counteract it.
I don’t know whether attendance was required at those meetings, but if it was and such a meeting was in Illinois, the company would be fined a thousand bucks under the Act for every Illinois employee there. That’s wrong. Giggle if you want but they should be free to discuss those things as they choose.
The list of exemptions from the Act is very narrow. Even nonprofit 501(c)(3) companies are covered. Most think tanks and many political policy operations on the left and right are 501(c)(3)s, including Wirepoints. We and others like us now can’t discuss government matters at our internal meetings?
Good luck trying to force us to comply. The Act is as brazen a First Amendment violation as you will find. At least six other states have passed or are considering similar legislation, called “captive audience bans,” and they are already being challenged in court on First Amendment grounds.
The main purpose of the Act was to ban meetings where management discourages union activity. The Act does that, but to say it’s overbroad would be a monumental understatement. Even that purpose is legally questionable. Other captive audience bans are being challenged on the grounds that the field is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act, making the state laws impermissible.
Illinois has now firmly established itself as the state most hostile to freedom of speech. A list of examples is below.
In one case last year, the state’s First Amendment violation was so extreme that a federal judge ridiculed it as “stupid” as well as unconstitutional. That forced Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to give up trying to defend the law at issue.
Let’s hope this new law gets taken to court fast. It, too, is stupid as well as unconstitutional.
