Freedom of association
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Freedom of association is the right enjoyed by free adults to mutually choose their associates for whatever purpose they see fit.
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[edit] United States
While the United States Constitution's First Amendment identifies the rights to assemble and to petition the government, the text of the First Amendment itself does not make specific mention of a right to association. The United States Supreme Court jurisprudence names two distinct ways in which the right may be implicated:
- 1. Freedom of association is recognized and may be protected as a fundamental element of personal liberty when choices to enter into and maintain certain intimate human relationships are at issue.
- 2. Freedom of association is recognized and may be protected for the purposes of engaging in activities protected by the text of the First Amendment—speech, assembly, petitioning government for a redress of grievances, and the free exercise of religion. Because the role of these relationships is central to safeguarding individual freedoms, they may receive protection from undue intrusion by the State. Thus, there is a constitutional freedom to associate as a means of preserving other individual liberties.
[edit] Limitation
However, the implicit First Amendment right of association is not a general right of association. For example, it is illegal in the United States to consider race in the making and enforcement of private contracts other than marriage or taking affirmative action. This limitation of freedom of association results from Section 1981 of Title 42 of the Civil Rights Act, as weighed against the First Amendment according to the court decision Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160 (1976).
The holding of Runyon is that the defendant private schools were free to express and teach their views, such as white separatism, but could not discriminate on the basis of race in the provision of services to the general public. So if the plaintiff African-American children wished to attend such private schools, and were clearly qualified in all respects (but race) and were able to pay the fees, and were willing to attend despite the fact that the schools strongly disliked them, then the schools were required by Section 1981 to admit them. The general rule to be drawn from this is that the First Amendment protects the right to express, including expression of racial discrimination, but people may not practice such ideas even within private associations.
This doctrine rests on the interpretation of a private contract as a "badge" of slavery when either party considers race in choosing the other. The phrase "badges... of slavery" is from the Circuit Court decision 109 U.S. 3 (1883) [1] upholding the power of Congress to pass laws under the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution compensating for the legacy of slavery.
[edit] Workers' Freedom of Association
To most of the world, the freedom of association is a right identified under international labor standards as the right of workers' to organize and collectively bargain. The freedom of association is recognized as a fundamental human right by a number of human rights documents, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Labor Standards #87 and #98 -- two of the eight fundamental, core international labor standards.
[edit] See also
The page was seeded with material from Wikipedia This term is part of the Infoshop Glossary
