GOP assaults the Constitution: Why they don’t really care about free speech

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/11/suddenly_the_gop_hates_the_constitution_why_they_dont_really_care_for_free_speech/

Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 07:30 AM CST

GOP assaults the Constitution: Why they don’t really care about free speech

Remember their love of liberty and freedom? Now they want to curtail protests and shut down workers' free speech

Josh Eidelson


Jeremy Durham (Credit: AP/Erik Schelzig)

In moves that pro-labor legal scholars warn may violate the U.S. Constitution, Mississippi, Michigan and Tennessee Republicans have introduced bills that would strengthen the hands of bosses faced with protesting employees.

“The language is so broad, the potential is so destructive, that what they’re basically doing is outlawing strikes …” University of Texas labor law professor Julius Getman told Salon. “Or they’re doing their best to limit strikes or picketing to situations where you have two or three people standing still. The idea of the union manifesting concerted power of workers is something that they’re seeking to prohibit.”

“People have a right to free speech, but they don’t have a right to keep someone from going to work,” countered state Rep. Jeremy Durham, who introduced that state’s anti-picketing bill.

All three state bills would lower the bar for businesses to seek and secure judicial injunctions against labor picketing – a form of protest long used by workers seeking to dissuade customers or strikebreakers, attract reporters or supporters, and spotlight alleged abuses. In addition to changing injunction rules, the proposal in Mississippi’s House would ban picketing that “has or intends the effect of violence or intimidation, near or contiguous to the business’ customers”; Tennessee’s would ban picketing that is “preventing the pursuit of any lawful work or employment by means of disturbance or nuisance.”

At a private home (say, a CEO’s mansion), Mississippi’s and Tennessee’s bills would make disrupting “the resident’s right to quiet enjoyment” grounds for convicting picketers of a crime. The bill in Michigan’s House would remove current language making certain picketing a misdemeanor, but add language imposing a $1,000 a day fine for a person (including an individual protesting worker, not just an organization or a union official) repeatedly found to have picketed illegally. And the bill passed by Mississippi’s Senate would allow an individual picketer to be thrown in jail for six months.

FULL story at link.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. But, hey, as long as anti-choice protesters can go to doctors' homes and picket

or barricade abortion clinics from their clients, it's all good. These people make me sick.