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By\u00a0Juan Cole<\/a><\/p>\n Andrew DeMillo at the Associated Press<\/a>\u00a0reports that a 3-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has struck down an Arkansas law requiring contractors with the state to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel.<\/p>\n The alternative print monthly the\u00a0Arkansas Times\u00a0<\/em><\/a>carried advertising from the University of Arkansas \u2013 Pulaski Technical College. When the law was passed, the university demanded that owner Alan Leveritt sign the pledge not to boycott. Leveritt does not boycott Israel, but he\u00a0absolutely refused to sign<\/a>\u00a0any such constraint on his and his reporters\u2019 freedom of speech, which had the effect of abrogating their First Amendment rights. UA-PTC thus pulled their advertising and Leveritt sued them with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union.<\/p>\n The 8th Circuit has upheld Leveritt\u2019s right to freedom of speech.<\/p>\n DeMillo writes,<\/p>\n The court said the law is written so broadly that it would also apply to vendors that support or promote a boycott.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Act prohibits the contractor from engaging in boycott activity outside the scope of the contractual relationship \u2018on its own time and dime,\u2019\u201d the court said in its 2-1 decision. \u201cSuch a restriction violates the First Amendment.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The supporters of the anti-boycott law will not tell you that state universities consider professors who come to give talks on their campuses to be sole proprietors of a business for tax purposes, and so speakers invited to campus cannot be paid an honorarium or be reimbursed for their travel expenses unless they sign the anti-boycott pledge. These laws are thus they biggest threats to campus free speech ever seen in the history of the United States.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t myself boycott Israel proper, though I do\u00a0boycott Israeli squatter settlements<\/a>\u00a0on the West Bank, but I would not sign a statement such as was demanded by the Arkansas state government and so would have been effectively prevented from speaking at the University of Arkansas.<\/p>\n The anti-boycott laws are the ultimate in cancel culture.<\/p>\n They are also un-American. The Boston Tea Party was a boycott of a British commodity because of American feelings that the British government was taxing them without representation.<\/p>\n Some\u00a032 states<\/a>\u00a0have passed laws\u00a0prohibiting<\/a>\u00a0the boycott of Israel. Whenever these laws have been challenged in the courts, they have been struck down, and they are clearly unconstitutional. The laws are backed by Israel\u2019s cabinet-level Ministry of Strategic Affairs and are a clear and systematic attack on the basic rights of Americans.<\/p>\n The proponents of boycotting Israel are making a stand against that country\u2019s policy of keeping 5 million Palestinians stateless and without basic human rights under Israeli military rule.<\/p>\n Boycotting the state of Israel, refusing to buy its bonds or give it money or take money from it is not the same as acting in a discriminatory way toward Jews. Some 20% of Israelis are not Jews in any case.<\/p>\n African-American boycotts of white discriminatory businesses\u00a0were key<\/a>\u00a0to the victory of the Civil Rights movement in the 1920s (see below).<\/p>\n The right wing in America routinely sets up boycotts. Trump supporters\u00a0boycotted Walmart<\/a>\u00a0because it carried t-shirts saying \u201cImpeach Trump.\u201d The powerful far-right American Family Association also launched a boycott of Walmart because the company put out an ad that was gay friendly. Trump supporters boycotted Netflix over the company\u2019s deal to have Barack and Michelle Obama produce content. The Trump movement, tinged with fascism and white supremacism, has advocated large numbers of boycotts of companies\u2013 Starbucks, Nike, Nordstrom\u2019s even Oreo.<\/p>\n Republican Senator Rick Scott\u00a0has urged a U.S. boycott<\/a>\u00a0of China.<\/p>\n Would that be a violation of the civil rights of Chinese-Americans or a form of racial discrimination? Of course not. China is a sovereign country, as is Israel, and Americans are free not to do business with a country to whose policies they object.<\/p>\n For the right to boycott as a First Amendment right, the key case is\u00a0NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware<\/em>, which came out of the Civil Rights movement and the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n Wikipedia explains<\/a>,<\/p>\n [I]n 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and a young black man, Roosevelt Jackson was shot and killed by two Port Gibson police officers. On April 19, 1968, the field secretary of the NAACP for Mississippi, Charles Evers, led a march to the Claiborne County courthouse and demanded that the entire Port Jefferson police force be discharged When the demand was not met, the boycott on the merchants was [imposed]. On April 21, Evers made a speech in which he said, \u201cIf we catch any of you going into these racist stores, we\u2019re going to break your damn neck.\u201d \u2026 In at least 10 instances, blacks who violated the boycott experienced instances of violence, including shots fired into their homes, bricks thrown through their windshields, and tires on their cars slashed. Five of the incidents occurred in 1966, and were not correlated to Mr. Evers\u2019 speech, and the other 5 were undated, and so they were discarded from the court case. . .<\/p>\n \u201cOn October 31, 1969, 17 of the merchants sued in the Chancery Court of Hinds County, 146 individuals, the NAACP, and Mississippi Action for Progress (MAP) in state court to recover losses caused by the boycott and to enjoin future boycott activity . . . A trial began in 1973 and, in 1976, the chancellor found that the black defendants were jointly and severally liable to the plaintiffs based on three separate theories: (1) for a tort of malicious interference with the plaintiff\u2019s business; (2) for violation of a Mississippi statute banning secondary boycotts on the theory that the defendants\u2019 primary dispute was with the governing authorities of Port Gibson and Claiborne County, and not with the white merchants at whom the boycott was directed; and (3) the court found a violation of Mississippi\u2019s antitrust statute . . . \u201cIn a decision by Justice Stevens, the Supreme Court reversed the Supreme Court of Mississippi\u2019s decision, holding that the nonviolent elements of the petitioners\u2019 activities were protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and holding that the petitioners were not liable in damages for the consequences of their nonviolent, protected activity. This decision means that \u201cboycotts and related activities to bring about political, social and economic change are political speech, occupying \u201cthe highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Supreme Court\u00a0found for the NAACP and against Claiborne Hardware<\/a>\u00a0in 1982: \u201cWhile States have broad power to regulate economic activities, there is no comparable right to prohibit peaceful political activity such as that found in the boycott in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n Source:\u00a0Common Dreams<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nJoin the\u00a0Activist Post Community at Patreon<\/a>\u00a0for just $1 per month.<\/em><\/h3>\n
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