Topic: Civil Rights
“Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”
Enforcement of civil rights which completely disregards race and gender discrimination not only does not reflect a “proper understanding of the law”, it’s blatantly discriminatory. She’s arguing here that racial discrimination and gender discrimination are A-okay, because it’s not your right to not be discriminated against because of your race or gender. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 would like a word, Ms. Burke. One wonders what she believes a “proper understanding of the law” is, in this case.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.2: Department of Education here.
“One egregious example of this is the extent to which accreditors have forced colleges and universities, many of them faith-based institutions, to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that conflict with federal civil rights laws, state laws, and the institutional mission and culture of the schools.”
It’s a little funny to me here that she’s suggesting that the missions of faith-based colleges are fundamentally at odds with the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. That’s…quite an admission. She goes on to mandate that higher education institutions should still be allowed to be accredited even if they blatantly discriminate on the basis of race or gender. Then she doubles down on the idea that being forced to treat everyone equally is *really* offensive to religious institutions. Christians, are you hearing this? Does this represent your beliefs? I find it alarming that she’s couching all religious institutions (and religious people, as it follows), as bigots (or at least protecting their right to be bigots, if they want to be).
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.2: Department of Education here.
“OCR should withdraw its “Obligations Under Federal Civil Rights Laws to Ensure Access to Comprehensive Reproductive Health Care Services” guidance for retail pharmacies, which purports to address nondiscrimination obligations of pharmacies under federal civil rights laws and in fact orders them to stock and dispense first-trimester abortion drugs.”
So, he wants to return to the days of pharmacists being able to refuse you prescribed medication that they’re personally offended by. I hope all of them decide that they’re personally offended by dispensing Viagra to Republicans.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.
“Reassigning Responsibility for Prosecuting Election-Related Offenses from the Civil Rights Division to the Criminal Division.”
This would effectively make voter fraud a criminal offense rather than a civil one. More about the current penalties here36.
This is a solution begging for a problem. Voter fraud, again, is extremely rare. A comprehensive study found 31 credible instances37 between 2000 to 2014, out of more than a billion votes cast.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.8: Department of Justice here.
“Nevertheless, the Biden Administration has been hostile to people of faith, especially those with traditional beliefs about marriage, gender, and sexuality. The new Administration should enact policies with robust respect for religious exercise in the workplace, including under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), Title VII, and federal conscience protection laws.”
In practice, this would look like people being able to claim “religious objections” at work to get out of things like diversity training, handling same-sex marriage licenses, or even working with someone who is LGBTQ+. This would create hostile work environments.
Faith-based organizations would be given broader exemptions for their beliefs, for instance, not being required to hire anyone who doesn’t adhere to their beliefs. Health care workers could refuse to treat LGBTQ+ people. Religious hospitals could refuse to provide abortion, contraception, or gender-affirming care. Government employees could refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses without being penalized. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg – anyone could take advantage of this and claim religious exemption for getting out of almost any task at work.
More broadly, he’s saying that your religion trumps other people’s basic civil rights. This is called religious supremacy or religious exceptionalism. Berry is arguing for this, and supports the widespread discrimination against LGBTQ+ people that will result.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.9: Department of Labor and Related Agencies here.
“Support free speech and hold big tech accountable. Immediately conduct a thorough review of federal policy regarding free speech online and provide policy solutions to address big tech’s censorship of speech.”
Despite conservatives believing that Facebook censored information about COVID-19 (which was actually dangerous disinformation), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that while they were “pressured” by the Biden administration to remove disinformation, he never suggests that they actually did so. Anecdotally, I can attest that as a Facebook user, disinformation about COVID was rampant.
In June 2024, the Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit that would have restricted the government communicating with internet giants over what it saw a “misinformation”, because the majority opinion (written by Amy Coney Barrett) found that the two Republican-led states and social media users who filed the lawsuit against dozens of executive branch officials and agencies did not have legal right to do so, because they could not prove that government pressure had suppressed their free-speech rights.
Furthermore, if corporations are effectively people with regard to rights, social media companies are privately owned and allowed to platform (or not platform) whatever they want. In fact, most have a long history of not platforming hate speech. Not all speech qualifies as “free”, and it can be argued that harmful disinformation that could get people killed is NOT protected.
“For example, former president Trump filed a class action lawsuit against Twitter and the United States, alleging that the government coerced Twitter into suppressing speech in violation of the First Amendment; the complaint was dismissed on the grounds that Twitter was a private actor.” [Source]
This is particularly hypocritical, since Twitter kept an entire DATABASE of requests to censor content that came from Republicans.
“When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.”
So what are we holding Big Tech accountable FOR, in this case? Gilman doesn’t say.
Full contextual analysis of Section 4.1: Department of Commerce here.