Which is good because otherwise I would have some major, major problems.

Ilya Somin has an interesting post up over at The Volokh Conspiracy concerning a First Amendment lawsuit brought by a woman claiming that a public law school failed to hire her due to being a conservative and that this is a violation of her First Amendment rights.  His position is that this is not unconstitutional though it is idiotic.  (I'm paraphrasing a bit)

Without reading the lawsuit due to laziness, I agree with his position.  This is not unconstitutional.  It's stupid,  it's idiotic, it's cutting off your nose to spite your face, it's short sighted, it's moronic in the bad way but it shouldn't be unconstitutional.  I say this as someone who actually lost a job I desperately wanted on ideological grounds. 

There is no question that the deck is stacked against conservatives in academia.  But that doesn't mean that government interaction should occur.  After all, that's the type of interference that conservatives correctly decry.  I will say that there are some twists to this since we're talking about a public university but see re laziness as far as my discussing those ramifications. 

Having said all of that, I will admit that I am sympathetic to the desire to use the rules of the Left against them.  Sometimes the best way to point out how annoying and wrong and misplaced such suits are is to file them.  I am becoming more and more convinced that conservative and libertarian college students should use speech codes and whatnot as a weapon.  Sunlight is the best disinfectant and there's value to getting it on the record that some types of discrimination are perfectly fine.  Sure, we all know that's the case, but there is worth to having an explicit finding. 

I view this as I view sexual orientation employment discrimination - if an organization is so stupid as to cut off an entire group of intelligent, capable people, let them.  It will come back to hurt later on. 

I totally hope she wins though, just to hear the convoluted explanations about how rejecting a person due to her views is actually a win for intellectual freedom.

Posted by: alexthechick at 11:18 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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