A few business decide not to provide goods and services to black people -- not great but there are other options.
Every business decides to stop doing business with black people we have a real problem.
Every business decides to stop doing business with black people we have a real problem.
However, it cuts both ways: your other customers also have the option to boycott you and encourage other people to do the same.
And if every business decides to stop doing business with certain people, then either a) those people really need to rethink what they want to do, because maybe everyone else thinks they're reprehensible, or b) we actually do have a case of a civil rights violation in a new way that we haven't considered making a law for.
Every business deciding not to serve black people would be a case of (b) (though retrograde, as we already have laws around that), and refusing to provide service to hate groups is, IMO, clearly (a).
If it becomes commonplace to discriminate against people based on their political ideology then we may very well see the 'political party' protection broadened.
The same way we deal with sexuality as a protected class, which is to say poorly but better than nothing.
> Should political ideology be a protected class?
I think it should, I wouldn't have said it was necessary in years past but it really seems like we're heading down a road where people are going to have to signal the 'right' political values in order to get hired.
In small doses businesses can refuse service to classes of people, but when the discrimination is so commonplace that it becomes a burden to those being discriminated against then you may see the creation of a new protected class (or realistically the broadening of an existing one) to make sure they aren't starved or unable to find employment.