California's Move To Silence State Contractors

Cato reports:

Imagine that you do business in California. Maybe you’re in construction, or health care, or auto repair. Now imagine some or all of your income comes from state contracts; using the above examples, perhaps you build schools, or take care of patients on Medi-Cal, or fix broken-down LAPD squad cars. Now imagine that the state comes in and says, aha, because we pay your bills — again, on contracts relating to construction, health care, auto repair, etc. — and we love unions, you can’t talk to your employees about any negative aspects of unionization. Ridiculous, right? Who is a customer to tell you what to do with money that’s already in your pocket?

Well, that’s precisely what the great state of California is trying to do with a new statute that small businesses are challenging in the case of Chamber of Commerce v. Brown. It’s a little bit more complicated than I outline above because the case implicates highly technical provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (and previous Supreme Court interpretations thereof), but the gist is that California is attempting to silence employers by tying speech restrictions to unrelated state spending. For reasons that the petitioners ably present in their briefs and that I summarize in a podcast and in Cato’s own amicus brief, the Supreme Court should strike down this statute.

In any event, that’s the background to my trip to the Court to hear argument in Chamber v. Brown today. (The plaza in front of the courthouse steps was remarkably free of demonstrators after yesterday’s hoopla surrounding the DC Gun Ban case.)

Look who's against free speech.