Below is my column in The Hill on how Democrats in some blue states are moving from censoring speech to compelling speech in renewed attacks on free speech. They are facing resistance in the courts despite determined efforts to force others to mouth approved viewpoints.
Here is the column:
More than five years ago, I wrote in these pages of a growing trend on the left toward compelled speech — the forcing of citizens to repeat approved views and values. It is an all-too-familiar pattern. Once a faction assumes power, it will often first seek to censor opposing views and then compel the endorsement of approved views.
This week, some of those efforts faced setbacks and challenges in blue states like Washington and Illinois.
In Washington state, many have developed what seems a certain appetite for compelled speech. For example, Democrats recently pushed through legislation that would have compelled priests and other clerics to rat out congregants who confessed to certain criminal acts. Despite objections from many of us that the law was flagrantly unconstitutional, the Democratic-controlled legislature and Democratic governor pushed it through.
The Catholic Church responded to the enactment by telling priests that any compliance would lead to their excommunication.
U.S. District Court Judge Iain D. Johnston enjoined the law, and the Trump Administration sued the state over its effort to turn priests into sacramental snitches. Only after losing in court did the state drop its efforts.
In the meantime, the University of Washington has been fighting to punish professors who refuse to conform to its own orthodox values. In 2022, Professor Stuart Reges triggered a firestorm when he refused to attach a prewritten “Indigenous land acknowledgement” statement to his course syllabi. Such statements are often accompanied by inclusive and tolerant language of fostering different viewpoints in an academic community. However, when Reges decided to write his own land acknowledgment, university administrators dropped any pretense of tolerance.
Reges was not willing to copy and paste onto his syllabus a statement in favor of the indigenous land claim of “the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations.” Instead, he wrote, “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property, the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”
His reference to the labor theory is a nod to John Locke, who believed in natural rights, including the right to property created through one’s labor.
In my forthcoming book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I explore the foundations of the American Republic, including the influence of Locke. The Framers would have been appalled by efforts to compel speech as an example of “democratic despotism.” The Framers saw the greatest danger to our system as coming not from a tyrant but the tyranny of the majority.
Reges came face-to-face with the rage of a majority faction defied. He was told that although the university land acknowledgment was optional, his own acknowledgment was not allowed because it contributed to “a toxic environment.”
This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Reges’s favor and allowed his lawsuit to move forward. Judge Daniel Bress wrote that “student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval. But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor.”
Reges’s lawsuit, brought with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is a major victory for free speech.
However, the desire to both silence and compel speech continues to grow in tandem.
In Illinois, Democrats have taken up the cudgel of compelled speech on the issue of abortion. Again, over objection that the law was unconstitutional, Democrats and Gov. JB Pritzker passed a law that said that all healthcare providers, including pro-life and religious pregnancy help centers, must extoll to their patients the “benefits” of abortion, even if they have faith-based objections to abortion.
The Catholic Conference of Illinois and other religious organizations are represented by the Becket Fund, a leading defender of religious liberty in the courts.
A district court recently struck down the law, but Illinois refuses to give up. It is appealing the case in the hope of forcing pro-life health professionals to espouse the benefits of abortions.
Cardinal Blase Cupich, Chicago’s archbishop, warned this week that “The Church’s pro-life mission is under attack in Illinois” and called on every Catholic to oppose “this inhumane mandate.”
Note that neither the constitutional guarantee of free speech nor that of free exercise deterred these efforts to compel speech. It is the very face of democratic despotism as the majority brushes aside disfavored views and values as “toxic” or “harmful.” It shows how, 250 years after our founding, the seeds for majoritarian tyranny remain in this (like in any) democratic system.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the forthcoming “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution” on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
What!! No Trump haters commenting on how what Washington and Illinois are attempting to force down our throats is our own good. Let’s make it a mandate that all illegals must be made citizens and anyone opposing that will be prosecuted for a hate crime
Noted: “… the constitutional guarantee of free speech nor that of free exercise deterred these efforts to compel speech …” -JT
En re:
“Hello, babies. …” -Kurt Vonnegut
“Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much,” -John Wayne
“The three ego Cs are as follows…. Criticize. Condemn. Complain” -Dale Carnegie
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” -Robert Francis Kennedy
“better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have,” -Franz Kafka
What many people miss is that the First Amendment did not arise from abstract theory or good intentions. It was born from lived experience with coercion, compelled loyalty, and state intrusion into conscience.
The Constitution tells us how liberty is protected, but it does not explain why those protections were necessary. That explanation is found in the history that led to the Declaration of Independence.
When people assume “the Constitution will protect us” while forgetting the tyranny that made it necessary, they are repeating the same mistake made over and over in history. Rights do not erode because they are formally repealed. They erode because people forget what it felt like to lose them.
In Reges, the 6th Circuit did more than just allow the case to continue; it granted summary judgment in favor of Reges on the two critical issues.
Sorry, I meant the 9th Circuit.
Note how students, or at least their supposed feelings, are weaponized against dissent.
Tyrannical compelled speech is the anthesis of free speech: q.v., the U.S. Constitution, Amendment No. 1. Full and final stop.
The founding document is the Constitution of the United States of America of 1787, as ratified by nine states in 1788. If professor of law Turley and so many others can’t get that right then what can they get right? Politically independent and objective senior citizen Charles G. Shaver.
The Democratic Party is flagrantly unconstitutional, the Democratic-controlled legislature is delusional and Democratic politicians are evil.
The difference between Democrat and Communist continues to narrow.
The most dangerous group of fascists in America is the authoritarian left. Time and time again the left–Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro, Ho, Kim–forces strict compliance with its own approved ideology.
The far left in this country lives under a fundamental misconception that if only the people understood how just, good, and correct are our policies, they too would be believers. Thus, when the people are not in compliance, they try to force compliance. This is nothing short of desperation, assuming the people will comply with the agency they themselves constantly violate, the law.
On Free Speech, it seems, the first amendment may have scored a point or two lately. Illinois is an exception, having a presidential hopeful calling the shots. But he is merely hoisting his own petard.
But,but,but Trump.
The left will destroy free speech no matter what. They hate the truth.
Certainly the left is pushing us into a warped facsimile of North Korea. Unfortunately, they have not been equipped by their education, either parental or institutional, with the tools of thought which would enable them to see where that goes. Since my parents did teach me to think, I can see that horrific destination.
And when we get there, those who drove the process will blame the rest of us who didn’t want any part of it, first to last.
So basically the left is doing what fascists do. But we aren’t calling them fascists? For some reason, Professor Rurley and others like him don’t want to deal with what they consider sinking to a lower level and not productive. I really don’t think they understand that they cannot foster civility with people on the left right nowby they’re on extremely tolerant behavior. So they continue to call antifa anti fascist, when they are the fascists and allow the left to rule public opinion.
The left is fascist. Fascism is socialism, the opposite of communism socialism, but still socialism. Two different sides of the same coin.
Hitler’s Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
Benito Mussolini began his political career within the Italian Socialist Party (PSI).
Both are authoritarian. Both have ruthless dictators.
Both promise to take care of everyone for the greater good and fail because the state is what matters (socialism)
Both seek to export their ideology onto other states and often invade and set up puppet governments. All the soviets not Russia, and the Vichy government in France are examples.
Both have always been complete failures.