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Comment by ElComradio | Hacker News Reader

A way to address this might be to add "political opinions" to the list of protected classes. It is undeniably bad for a democracy (I know I know, we aren't technically a democracy) where people aren't free in practice to discuss contentious issues.

As currently stands, you can stand in the town square and promote affirmative action it would be very risky legally to fire you. But if you get up and argue for the repeal of some affirmative action legislation you can be safely fired with no objection from legal.

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> As currently stands, you can stand in the town square and promote affirmative action it would be very risky legally to fire you. But if you get up and argue for the repeal of some affirmative action legislation you can be safely fired with no objection from legal.

Legally, promoting either of those opinions is subject to exactly the same degree of protection. The willingness of a particular employer to accept the legal risk maybe different between them, but that's a different issue than the law itself.

That in practice it does not work as intended means it is bad law and needs tweaked. One way would be to say that all behavior "off the clock" and all attributes of a person not related to the job are protected. Another way would be to say nothing is protected. Right now we have a middle ground that plays favorites.

> That in practice it does not work as intended means it is bad law and needs tweaked.

In what specific, concrete ways does it not work out the way you think it is intended?

> One way would be to say that all behavior "off the clock" and all attributes of a person not related to the job are protected. Another way would be to say nothing is protected.

Those are obviously potential rules, but I don't see that either of them is closer to any reasonable interpretation of the intended result that antidiscrimination laws are intended to serve.

In what specific, concrete ways does it not work out the way you think it is intended?

I think we are starting to go in circles, but: It has the effect of cancelling out free discourse which is important to a functioning "democracy". A trivial example is that a business owner cannot be vocally anti-same sex marriage, because if she is, and a gay employee is fired for a "legitimate" reason, her behavior will go a long way towards convincing a jury.

Where this is going is why we are expanding the number of protected classes over time is that the real "intended result" is that you should not suffer at work for attributes that have nothing specifically to do with the job you are hired for.

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