A New York court has ruled that it’s okay for a bar to kick out a man wearing a MAGA hat. Greg Piatek claims he was refused service and then eventually kicked out of New York City bar The Happiest Hour in January 2017 for donning the bright red symbol of Trump support. He then filed a lawsuit against the establishment claiming discrimination.
The First Amendment, of course, protects speech from infringement by the government, but not from bar owners who don’t want Trump supporters drinking in their establishments. As for Piatek’s discrimination argument, state, federal, and city laws protect religious beliefs, but not political ones, and as the bar’s lawyer noted, “supporting Trump is not a religion,” the New York Post reported.
However, the idea of arguing in the courts that conservatives are being discriminated against is not likely to go away. Yesterday’s New York court ruling comes in the wake of an NLRB complaint on the other side of the country by former Google employee James Damore, who says the search giant violated his right to participate in protected activity–namely addressing workplace concerns–when it fired him over a 10-page memo arguing that women are not as suited for coding as men. The NLRB memo disagreed with Damore’s complaint, and recommended dismissing it, if it was not withdrawn.
But Damore has filed a lawsuit arguing that Google discriminates against conservative white men.
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