This week, a federal court will take up a case challenging a 2023 Minnesota law that prohibits employers from discussing religious or political matters at required meetings, including meetings on elections, regulations, and whether employees should join a union.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., bragged about the impact of the new law, saying that employers will either have to toe the line or be sent to jail.
Making matters worse, Walz also personally appointed all the members of Minnesota’s teacher licensing board, which recently instituted new rules restricting and coercing teachers’ speech. These new regulations “require educators to ‘affirm’ their students’ gender identities, have ‘racial consciousness,’ and learn to ‘disrupt oppressive systems,’” according to Fox News. Count me in as one of those who are shocked yet perhaps not terribly surprised that Walz believes that there should be no guarantees to free speech in America.
Couple Walz’s attacks on free speech with attempts from the political left (and Walz’s attorney general in particular) to put public pressure on social media platforms, such as Elon Musk’s X, and the message is clear. Our First Amendment is under attack.
Thomas Jefferson’s response to accusations that we are entertaining too much liberty was to compare our freedom of speech and the press directly with our freedom of religion. Namely, that a violation of any one freedom would be a violation of all the others, and “that libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld
