Will Swaim - Should California ban political talk at work?

California has made it illegal for employers to require workers to attend meetings about politics or religion. Is the law protecting employees from coercion, or violating employers' First Amendment rights?

Will Swaim is President of the California Policy Center. He joins the show to discuss the legal challenge to California's workplace speech law, the recent arguments before the Ninth Circuit, and what the case could mean for free speech in the workplace.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hey, welcome back to the Lars Larson show. Well, California has now made it illegal for your bonds to bring up politics or religion at work. Is free speech now against the law in California? And other states going to follow suit? Will welcome back to the program.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Would you mind telling my audience what the Ninth I call them the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has done when it comes to uh the question of your boss bringing up politics? Well, they do get overturned a lot, so, or religion when it comes to the workplace.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Yeah. Well, I'm happy to say, uh, let me just uh not bury the lead here, Lars, uh, that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals actually uh sided with us on this case. And the case is about Senate Bill 399, which Newsom signed into law in late 2024, went into effect this year. And what the law says is that no employer can require attendance at a meeting in which politics or religion are discussed. And that would seem to be a First Amendment violation. Absolutely. And it's clearly uh what the courts like to call a content-specific violation. In other words, uh this the state has decided that you can talk about almost anything you want in a mandatory meeting, but you can't talk about religion, uh, no matter how relevant to your business enterprise, and you can't talk about politics. And if you know, if you're okay with it, I'll give an example of real-life cases where this has happened and why we're involved in it.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I I would appreciate that, and so would my audience.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Great. So, right after this law passed, I got a call from a guy who is a fast food franchisee. He runs a um an establishment that is you know nationally prominent, globally prominent, but he just owns a couple of uh little shops in Southern California. And he called to ask me if he could actually explain why the law required him to begin thinking about reducing employee staffing, why menu prices were going up, why he was putting kiosks in the dining room and closing the dining rooms after I think it was 5 p.m. Uh and he, I said, So what would you say to your employees? And he said, Well, I would tell them that the law required us to raise their minimum wages. And in doing that, it forced me to figure out how to cut costs and raise prices. And without explaining to them why they were he was doing this, which was in response to a law, he couldn't really answer their questions. And they were asking, as employees were saying, like, you know, what happened to Joe? What happened to Samantha? Why are we cut? Why are people being fired? Am I gonna be fired? Why are there kiosks? And I told him, we don't know yet. We don't know whether the courts are gonna back us up on freedom of speech. We don't know whether the state's gonna prevail and bar you from telling people why your business is running the way it's running, even when that's a political conversation. So we went to a um CPC, you know, it talks about we talk about religion and politics all the time on mandatory staff calls. It's just the nature of our work. And the first federal judge we ran into, who was appointed by the Obama administration, or under the Biden administration, rather, uh, first federal judge we ran into, Lars, told us that uh, nope, we didn't have standing, we weren't allowed to fight this case, and she kicked us out. Now, the fact that she actually worked with government unions before wouldn't surprise you, I suppose. No. Because this whole initiative was brought by union members, by union leaders in California who do not want their who do not want people to know about the politics or religiosity of their employers.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Well, and how would you end up explaining anything? The the religion end of it might be a bit different, but when it comes to politics, politics decides the minimum wage. Politics might even say, well, uh on a certain uh certain kind of uh, you know, uh depending on the kind of workforce or the kind of uh service or product you're making, it might require a minimum number of workers. And you might then just say, well, if that's the minimum we're required to employ, then we can't afford to run the business. So we're gonna shut that part of the business down. Or we're no longer gonna offer this kind of uh you know, this kind of service or product to our to our customers. I can imagine that. The other things that are political are these crazy laws that say you have to give, say, two weeks of notice if somebody's schedule is gonna change. And how do you do that in the right time business? I've never been in it. But I imagine on a really sunny weekend in Southern California, the place is packed and you need everybody there. On the other hand, if it turns into rain and clouds and cold, you might staff half as many people in a restaurant or bar, and all of that is subject to laws passed by Sacramento. And now the federal government, or this law, Center Bill uh 399, says you can't talk to your employees about that, so you can't tell them why you're making changes.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

You've got it exactly right. And you know, the the politics part of it is very easily understood. You know, you and I just talked about it. How can you talk to your employees meaningfully about some of the weird labor requirements in the state of California without talking about politics? But if you do that right now in California, although the the appeals court continued blocking the uh enforcement of the law so far, which is a great thing, but only while we litigate it, um, you know, if you do that, ultimately the law would say that you're in that the state can file a complaint against you, and if it finds that you did speak about politics or religion, the cost to you in a fine is $500 per person per violation. If you have 10 employees, that's $5,000. If you do that two times in the course of a week, that's $10,000. And as the guy who owns the burger joint down here, you know, the little stores that he uh runs, if he's uh he said, if I get a $10,000 fine, I'm out of business. Like I can't take that kind of hit. Now, when I mentioned that to one of the state uh legislators who authored this thing, she told me, if you can't afford the crime, you know, if you can't pay the fine, don't do the crime. Wow. Uh that's her really casual attitude toward this. The businesses should just shut up and take the punishment.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

You know, Will Swayne is with me from the California Policy Center. I also wonder how would Hobby Lobby, for example, or uh, or I think Chick-fil-A, how would they explain, hey boss, why are we closed on Sunday? We just are. I I'm not allowed under law to tell you why our company has decided not to operate on Sunday, which they did very well with saying we're just not going to be open on Sunday, but we're not allowed to tell you.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yes. And and this, you know, this is why it comes you know, we we come right back to the heart of the First Amendment. If you start a business and you have employees on your property, in your building, in your storefront, and you you are no longer allowed to explain your religious motivations for wanting to do a certain thing, it's just A, it's an absolute violation of the First Amendment, but B, it's just unethical to tell people that on their own property, they can't talk to the people they're paying about what's nearest and most important to them in their business. And as you say, Chick-fil-A, Hobby Lobby, these are organizations, and you know, whether you like them or you don't, they're they are religiously oriented organizations. Yes, they sell, you know, chicken tenders or you know, knitting needles or whatever, but their enterprise is in their minds, it's really about godliness. And again, we don't have to agree with them. And if we don't like them, we can go someplace else.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Absolutely right. That is Will Swaim. Will uh is the CEO of the California Policy Center. Will it's a pleasure as always. Back in a moment. I'll get to your phone calls and emails. At eight six six, hey Lars, send emails to talk at LarsLarson.com. And you're listening to the Radio Northwest Network.