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 from the cognizance of federal tribunals.”
Our First Amendment rights are no less sacred to Virginians than our Statute for Religious Freedom. Yet more than platitudes, policies limiting speech speak more to the values of East Germany than American freedom.
When we see social media spaces pressured into censorship, or when we see political opinions forced upon the vast majority by government fiat, one wonders aloud whether we really believe in what the words democracy and freedom entail.
For Jefferson, truth had nothing to fear so long as reason was left free to combat it. Virginians and Americans understand that our First Amendment rights are not polite codes of behavior, but rather a sacred duty and a charge.
Yet in today’s world, we see more of the impulse to control narratives rather than allow ideas to be freely challenged and explored. Walz is only saying the quiet part out loud. In today’s relentless media culture, counterpoints are not merely inconvenient to the narrative; they are dangerous to those seeking to impose their values on an unsuspecting public.
Critics and little Robespierres will always be quick to charge that such freedom is dangerous to their interests. Such critics are probably worth the criticism. Yet there are two areas in particular that Walz mentions, namely whether there is the freedom to be odious and hateful in the public square, and likewise whether one has the right to spread misinformation under the First Amendment.
Let me be explicitly clear on this point. Acts of hate are neither ignored nor tolerated in Virginia. As Virginia attorney general, I have exhausted this office in identifying and prosecuting violence, whether it is the targeting of Jewish students on college campuses or our African American citizens.
Yet as the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear time and time again, no one in a free society has the right not to be offended. No one in America has the right never to be challenged on his opinions or views. Everyone has the right to be wrong.
Obviously there are laws against defamation and libel in the United States, though nowhere near as draconian as the laws in other nations. In such instances, we are not talking about the free exercise of speech or press but rather their abuse. Yet our latitude in such instances tests the very meaning of the word inexhaustible, precisely because our faith in our fellow human beings ought to be likewise.
This Jeffersonian optimism was once the hallmark of Americans in both political parties. Consisting of a singular belief in the promise of the American spirit, our shared belief in the common goodness of our friends and neighbors is the spirit that made America great. Self-governance and self-government should triumph above every busybody and scold.
We lost this spirit, or at the very least we allowed ourselves to be distracted from this optimism by the times. Yet every Sept. 11, we seem to remember who we are. Every July 4, we seem to remember that no matter what we might believe or what opinions we might hold, together we are all Americans. Our differences remain our strength.
For myself, the idea that such differences should be stomped out by a heavy-handed thought police isn’t just the difference between Minnesota and Virginia; it’s the difference between a former Soviet republic and the American experiment.
What Ronald Reagan understood and what Jefferson believed about our basic constitutional freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment stand entirely at odds with how the Biden administration has operated and what Tim Walz believes is necessary for an open public square.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are values as old as Jefferson, and rights that no government can suppress for long. Our First Amendment is first for a reason. Tim Walz knows better, and if he doesn’t, one might suggest a quiet evening re-reading the American Constitution.
Jason Miyares is the attorney general for Virginia.
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