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So, Your Boss May Suspect You Are A Racist If You Wear The Gadsden Flag?
Imagine you stroll into your place of employment sporting a Gadsden Flag hat or t-shirt and your employer immediately suspects you are a racist because of it. You know, something similar to wearing a Confederate Flag piece of clothing attire, right? Well this happened to one man.
HeatStreet reports:
Earlier this year, the EEOC received a complaint from a "Shelton," an African American, who charged that his employer (the federal government) had subjected him to racial discrimination when a coworker "repeatedly wore a cap with an insignia of the Gadsden Flag." Shelton (not his real name) said he found the cap to be "racially offensive" because the man who designed it in 1775, Christopher Gadsden, was a slave owner and because the insignia was a "historical indicator of white resentment against blacks stemming largely from the Tea Party."
The EEOC acknowledged that the flag did not originate with the Tea Party movement, and was created centuries ago "in a non-racial context." However, the commission also found that the Gadsden Flag could be "interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages in some contexts," citing as an example a 2014 shooting spree in which white supremacists draped Gadsden Flags over the bodies of two murdered police officers.
"Certainly, Complainant ascribes racial connotations to the symbol based on observations that it is sometimes displayed in racially-tinged situations," the commission wrote.
The commission concluded that the claim "must be investigated to determine the specific context in which [the hat-wearing coworker] displayed the symbol in the workplace," and called for the gathering of "evidence that would illuminate the meaning conveyed by [the coworker's] display of the symbol."
"Certainly, Complainant ascribes racial connotations to the symbol based on observations that it is sometimes displayed in racially-tinged situations," wrote the commission.
Eugene Volokh, at The Washington Post, writes, "Recall that this is not a case about when private employers may restrict what their employees wear on the job, or even about when government employers may do so. Private employers have very broad power on this, because they aren't bound by the First Amendment (though statutes in some states may constrain employers' power to some extent). Government employers also have fairly broad power to restrict their employees' on-the-job speech and behavior.
"Instead, this is a case about the rules that all employers, public or private, must follow, on pain of massive legal liability," he adds. "The harassment law rules (which, as I noted, are the same for private employers as for the federal government) are imposed by the government acting as sovereign — the area where the First Amendment should provide the most protection — not just the government acting as employer."
OK, where did the Central Government get the authority to determine harassment in the work place? Could Mr. Volokh point us to that in the Constitution? Because it isn't there. These harassment laws are unconstitutional, especially when it comes to a historical flag on clothing.
The Gadsden Flag originated during the Revolutionary War which features a coiled snake and the words "Don't Tread On Me." There is nothing racist about the flag. In fact, the flag is named after American general and statesman Christopher Gadsden (1724–1805), who designed it in 1775 during the American Revolution. It was used by the Continental Marines as an early motto flag, along with the Moultrie Flag.
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