There are compelling indications of both the need for a corporate-culture change and the prospects for it.
There are compelling indications of both the need for a corporate-culture change and the prospects for it.
D oes the law influence culture, or does the culture influence the law? The answer is “yes.” While the legal battles over free speech often slog their way through the courts at a glacial pace, changes in American culture can occur rapidly by comparison. In one particular and crucial pillar of American culture, our economy, there are compelling indications of both the need for change and the prospects for it.
Reforming culture in corporate America to strengthen respect for the cherished principles of freedom is not some Quixotic crusade. Take, for example and encouragement, Alliance Defending Freedom’s recent success with the nation’s largest bank, JP Morgan Chase. After Chase de-banked the nonprofit of Ambassador Sam Brownback, Christian investor David Bahnsen championed a shareholder proposal, and over a dozen state attorneys general and state financial officers wrote to Chase, to ask for answers about its discriminatory de-banking practices.
Shortly after this campaign, Chase rolled back its “social risk” policy that had been used to discriminate against customers based on viewpoint. And, although the Viewpoint Diversity Index is a recent arrival on the cultural scene, American consumers are now equipped with the information necessary to make informed choices about which companies will support free speech and religious freedom. Recent developments at the United States Supreme Court demonstrate the necessity of that change in American corporate culture.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, or lack thereof, in Murthy v. Missouri considered the Biden administration’s outsourcing censorship of disfavored viewpoints on Covid-19 and other issues to private sector social-media companies. The Court’s majority found that the plaintiffs, whose speech was censored by the social-media companies, failed to establish that the censorship was at the behest of the federal government, and so lacked standing to bring the suit. Therefore, the Court did not address what Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent described as “the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years.”
The most tantalizing question in the English language is “what if?” What if, instead of acting as coerced puppets of the federal government’s scheme to evade the First Amendment, the social-media companies were part of a corporate culture in America that valued and defended free speech? If the social-media companies had resisted the federal government’s demands and filed suit themselves, the escape hatch of legal “standing” might not have been available to the Court. Americans might have been spared another case where essential questions about fundamental principles of ordered liberty go unanswered.
Thankfully, in another case this term, National Rifle Association v. Vullo, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the government cannot use third parties to censor, cancel, or deplatform groups with which it disagrees. Given the facts in the record, the Court concluded, with little difficulty, that for New York’s Department of Financial Services head, Maria Vullo, to threaten enforcement action against companies who refused to stop doing business with the NRA violated the First Amendment.
Vullo’s coercion was about as subtle as a bulldozer. While the Biden administration’s pressure on the social-media companies was not as transparent as New York’s on NRA-supporting businesses, it was no less overt in its goal: the censorship of disfavored viewpoints. And as Justice Alito correctly observed in his dissent from Murthy, “officials who read [Murthy] together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.”
In today’s social-media-driven age of opinion overload, it is more difficult to use freedom of thought when speech is censored to the point that only one side of an issue is available for public consideration. A vibrant exchange of ideas is the lifeblood of a free civil society in a republic.
Our Constitution places restrictions on government to protect the God-given rights of the people. When government enlists private corporations to do its unconstitutional dirty work, we need robust legal protections to expose and defuse such efforts, but we also need a resilient corporate culture of freedom that is ready and willing to resist the government’s pressure. The day may come when the commitment of America’s public institutions to freedom of thought, speech, and association is mirrored in the private sector. May it come quickly.