Does a privately-owned business have the right to set rules about behavior is on its property?

[Orrex]

Poll question: Does a privately-owned business have the right to set rules about behavior is on its property?

[Cleita]

1. Yes, because businesses are private property and when you open your

property to the public, you can make the rules, just as much as you can ask a guest not to smoke in your home.

[izquierdista]

3. No

Put up a sign "No Colored Allowed" and see how long your business will stay open.

[hlthe2b]

16. As despiccable as that would be...a business can in some cases

choose who they serve. Obvious exceptions are to the sale of real estate or other areas where Federal $$ come into play and thus legislation has been passed to ensure non-discrimination. The fact that the business would likely close would be the result of the more sane members of the public boycotting the business--not the result of any governmental action.

[Orrex]

21. I wondered about exactly that point

Forgive my ignorance, but is there a specific statute (or statutes) that spells this out? That is, can I point to some law that permits a business to legally (but detestably) restrict its clientele based on demographics?

[hlthe2b]

27. I have been told by the rather large number of lawyers in my

friend/family circle, that a business can restrict its clientele on any basis, except where restricted by law. So, rather than look for a law that spells this out, what you really need to look at is the exceptions--e.g., real estate and wherever Federal grants/dollars are involved (e.g., small business administration loans), higher education-related activities-- Any place that Federal tax dollars have influence, there may well be non-discriminatory clauses that are in effect. To some degree this may also be the case with state or local tax dollars/loans/grants.

[Orrex]

32. Very interesting

In my Skinhead example, they excluded group naturally objected on the grounds that we were discriminating against them. One of them actually threatened to sue on those grounds.

I was just a cog in the wheel, so I couldn't make company policy, but the restaurant's owners (who were themselves of a demographic minority) basically said "go ahead and sue us."


Nothing ever came of it.



I'd wondered about the all-private-money versus some-federal-dollars angle. Your post helped to clarify that--thanks!

[hlthe2b]

54. Clarification: from a legal site (specific to restaurants discriminating)

I was pointed to this as a more comprehensive overview of Federal Law restrictions specific to restaurants... It does clarify quite a bit what I was trying to post earlier. Restaruants are sort of a special case because they are considered a "public accomodation" (as would hotel/motels, one would assume). However, skinheads are not considered to be a "protected class" so I would think the restaurant might have gotten by with it, even if sued, but that is my guess

http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/restaurants-right-to-refuse-service.html


Does a Restaurant Have the Unrestricted Right to Refuse Service to Specific Patrons?

No. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 explicitly prohibits restaurants from refusing service to patrons on the basis of race, color, religion, or natural origin. In addition, most courts don’t allow restaurants to refuse service to patrons based on extremely arbitrary conditions. For example, a person likely can’t be refused service due to having a lazy eye.

But Aren’t Restaurants Considered Private Property?

Yes, however they are also considered places of public accommodation. In other words, the primary purpose of a restaurant is to sell food to the general public, which necessarily requires susceptibility to equal protection laws. Therefore, a restaurant’s existence as private property does not excuse an unjustified refusal of service. This can be contrasted to a nightclub, which usually caters itself to a specific group of clientele based on age and social status.

So Are “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone” Signs in Restaurants Legal?

Yes, however they still do not give a restaurant the power to refuse service on the basis of race, color, religion, or natural origin. These signs also do not preclude a court from finding other arbitrary refusals of service to be discriminatory. Simply put, restaurants that carry a “Right to Refuse Service” sign are subject to the same laws as restaurants without one.

What Conditions Allow a Restaurant to Refuse Service?

There a number of legitimate reasons for a restaurant to refuse service, some of which include:

* Patrons who are unreasonably rowdy or causing trouble
* Patrons that may overfill capacity if let in
* Patrons who come in just before closing time or when the kitchen is closed
* Patrons accompanied by large groups of non-customers looking to sit in
* Patrons lacking adequate hygiene (e.g. excess dirt, extreme body odor, etc.)

In most cases, refusal of service is warranted where a customer’s presence in the restaurant detracts from the safety, welfare, and well-being of other patrons and the restaurant itself.

[Orrex]

57. Excellent information.

Thanks for posting the followup!

[asksam]

52. Some businesses DO discriminate...

Obstetricians and prostate cancer docs do it all the time.

:: ducking and running ::

[Orrex]

17. When I worked at a restaurant in 1992, the owners refused to serve Skinheads

A handful of them were known to be violent and aggressive, but it wasn't clear which individuals were part of that handful. However, some of the group had previously harassed and verbally attacked several employees of the restaurant.

Were the owners wrong to bar this certain group based on the actions of a few?

[hlthe2b]

22. convenience stores often restrict how many kids come in at once

or require them to check their backpacks. While it might be biased "profiling", it is their right to do so. Same as with the skinheads.

[Orrex]

23. Well, they were assholes anyway

Even the ones who didn't directly harass the workers.

[cliffordu]

42. "colored" is not a behavior.

read the fucking question, please.

[Confusious]

50. That's against federal law

It's out the hands of business owners. They can still dictate other behaviors, such as not carrying a gun onto premises.

[cliffordu]

41. wrong answer to another post

[DJ13]

2. The easy answer is yes

The real question is should citizens of the US expect to lose their Rights on private property?

[Orrex]

6. Not quite

The real real question is "why should individuals presume that their rights automatically trump those of the property owner whose property they enter."

If you are not held on that private property under duress or against your will, then your rights haven't been denied; you are free to leave and exercise those rights in a public forum. It's the same as having the right to free speech but not having the right to demand that a privately owned radio station must distribute your speech.

[DJ13]

8. So our Constitution ends at the doorstep to Capitalism?

Is it any wonder why the right (and our own DLC) wants to sell off much of our public properties?

[Orrex]

9. If I'm invited into your home, can I tell your child to go screw himself?

Or do you, as the property owner, maintain some right of control over what happens on your property?

[DJ13]

11. You could, but she's a cat so I doubt she'd care

[Orrex]

12. So you concede the point, then?

That is, you agree that it's not as simple as "Constitutional Rights vs. Capitalism," but rather that it's in fact a more subtle interplay?

[DJ13]

20. To me, the Constitution should encompass every bit of the US

Should we exclude privately owned areas?

Homes yes, businesses Im not so sure since people spend one third of most days at work.

That exclusion of privately owned businesses may become increasingly contentious in the coming years as we find more and more government properties ending up in private hands.

[Statistical]

38. Where do you get the idea the Constitution restricts individuals? It restricts the govt.

Example:

The federal govt shuts down DU - violation of 1st amendment
The mods hate you so they ban you from DU - you have no recourse.

DU is private property. The BofR has no effect on other individuals.

[X_Digger]

40. Homes = private property, Businesses = private property..

The law makes little distinction between the two- mainly around whether or not a business is open to the public- ie, because my home is not open to the public, I don't have to have an ADA compliant bathroom with grab rails and 36" wide doorways, etc.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

69. You could. You would likely be asked to leave at that point, which you would have to do.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. To Some Degree

There are limits, of course (violence, harassment, etc).

[Xipe Totec]

5. Subject to constitutional and statutory limitations, yes

You don't have the right to make murder legal on your private property, or set up a meth lab.

[Orrex]

7. If, for example, you don't want someone to say "fuck" on your business' property, can you forbid it?

Or does this constitute an unacceptable denial of 1st amendment rights of the individual?

[Xipe Totec]

13. I would say anybody who's on your property at your will an pleasure,

can be asked to leave for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all.

If they have a right to be there, not subject to your will, then so long as they abide by the law, you cannot place arbitrary conditions on their behavior.

[Orrex]

18. Could you clarify part of that for me?

If they have a right to be there, not subject to your will, then so long as they abide by the law, you cannot place arbitrary conditions on their behavior.

When would they have a right to be there on my property, not subject to my will? I don't deny that such cases might exist, but I can't think of one at the moment.

Other than in cases of emergency, such as fire or health or the like. Other examples?

[petronius]

25. I'm not sure what XT was thinking of, but how about sidewalks?

I think they're private property with a required public easement...

[Xipe Totec]

28. That's also a good example

Not just sidewalks, but other public easements, such as accesses to public beaches through private properties, and access to other private lands where no public roads exist (The royal roads).

[Orrex]

34. Ooh--that's a great suggestion.

Totally didn't think of that.

[Xipe Totec]

26. Greensboro

On February 1, 1960, four African American students – Ezell A. Blair Jr. (also known as Jibreel Khazan), David Leinhail Richmond, Joseph Alfred McNeil, and Franklin Eugene McCain – from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (A&T) , a historically black college, sat at a segregated lunch counter in the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth's store. This lunch counter only had chairs/stools for whites, while blacks had to stand and eat. Although they were refused service, they were allowed to stay at the counter. The four students were aware that Woolworth’s would not serve blacks at their lunch counter but they sat down anyway, engaging themselves in a plan they had been discussing for a month prior to the sit-in.

When notified by one of the waitresses of the events that were occurring in his store that February afternoon, the store’s manager Clarence Harris first told his staff to leave the students alone, hoping they would eventually leave. However, Harris grew nervous that violence would soon ensue so he went to the police. Although he did not have the men arrested, assuming their demonstration would soon end, he did have several police officers stationed in the store.

Contrary to the manager's assumptions, the following morning the four students, along with 23 other men and 4 women showed up at Woolworth’s to protest. As the days went on, more and more students from the Agricultural and Technical State University as well as Bennett College and Dudley High School (all with a dominantly African American student population) participated in the Woolworth sit-in.

The number of students grew so large that by February 5, four days after the sit-in began, 300 students arrived at Woolworth’s to take part in the peaceful protest. On February 6, tensions mounted between the blacks and whites at the lunch counter. The football team from the university arrived in hopes of using their size to threaten anyone who tried to stop the protest. As white reaction to the demonstration grew more violent, a bomb scare forced the protesters out of Woolworth's and C.L. Harris closed his store for over two weeks.

Although the phone call that announced the bomb threat did occur, many people were suspicious of the caller's identity, believing that the person was not anonymous and that it was an attempt to halt the protest. The sit-in that had begun with only four students had sparked a massive movement throughout the Southern states as more and more protesters engaged in this type of demonstration. This protest sparked sit-ins and economic boycotts that became a hallmark of the American civil rights movement.

According to Franklin McCain, one of the four black teenagers who sat at the "whites only" stools:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins

[Orrex]

33. Ah! Very interesting!

Thanks for the link.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

45. Are you talking about your property or your business?

[Orrex]

51. One's business is one's propery, no?

Assuming majority ownership, etc.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

55. There are different laws concerning a business even if one owns the property that business is on.

[Orrex]

56. For instance?

Others in the thread have already covered race-based discrimination and restricted speech. What did you have in mind?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

58. ADA. Your private home doesn't have to be wheelchair accessible. Your business may have to be.

[Orrex]

62. hlthe2b posted a good summary of "public accomodations" upthread

That would cover bars, restaurants, hotels, and the like. I'm not sure how necessarily applies to general retail establishments, if at all.


Excluding matters of accessibility and discrimination, what rights does a business have to restrict activities and behaviors on its property?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

63. Fire Code and Environmental laws would be another issue.

Those even include private property not associated with a business. You can't dump toxic waste on your property and many communities require burn permits for open burning.

[Orrex]

67. Well, how about this:

Do I as a business owner have the right to forbid people to peaceably assemble on my property?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

68. If it was solely your business and your land then you should.

However there are some issues that might complicate the matter. Leases, easements and contracts for example.

[Orrex]

70. Ah. Good point about leases.

I imagine that there could be a clause "renter will not do X" that might include restricting certain behaviors that are approved by the property owner.

[petronius]

15. Courts have held that malls can prevent free speech activities on their

property, so I'd guess that a speech code forbidding "fuck" would also be allowed. However, there is probably a line somewhere where an allowable speech code meets illegal discrimination, if the code is clearly targeted at excluding a protected group...

[hlthe2b]

19. That is true... Malls can restrict/limit types of speech activities

on their premises, disallow solicitation, etc.

[jmowreader]

43. Yes, you can put up a "no profanity" sign and enforce it

At work we had an Equal Opportunity class, and they were discussing acceptable vs non-acceptable topics of discussion. One of the examples was someone cracking this joke: "What's the difference between a Democrat and a Republican on election day?" I said that wasn't the kind of a joke you'd want to tell in the workplace, only to be told it was okay to discuss politics in the workplace. To which I replied, what if I said the punchline was "A Republican would vote for Josef Stalin if he offered a big enough tax cut."? Suddenly it became obvious why cracking political jokes isn't really acceptable speech among people you don't really know. Obviously if you're a Democrat in a group of like-minded people and someone threw out a John Boehner or Sarah Palin attack joke it would be fine; same deal with Republicans cracking Obama jokes. But telling political jokes to people whose political leanings you're not sure of is never a good idea.

[customerserviceguy]

10. You left out the "Maybe" option

When the rules violate the law, then they are not allowable.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

14. OK, what other thread is this about? -nt

[stray cat]

24. If you can have rules of behavior for those in your house

[RandomThoughts]

29. Depends on what you believe.

If you think having dollars determines who sets the rules, then yes. If you believe there are other conditions like what is best for society, and best for most people, then no.

The knee jerk answer is yes, because within the status quo, people are taught that money makes most of the difference in who decides. But we know that is not true from things like businesses not allowed to use child labor or sell deadly products.

So they should be able to set rules, if they do not infringe on the rights of society to exist, dependant on what society decides is acceptable conditions and rules. Then within those rules, the 'owners' of property can set individual rules.

If private ownership of property or business is all that determines something, then people are selling themselves to whoever has the most money, and in that system, having the most money has nothing to do with social good, since having money can be used to get more money without any baseline of what is acceptable within society.

What if crooks and robbers bought many businesses, would that mean they should be able to operate in deception and fraud hurting many people? Or would society set a group of rules to keep that single motive in check with the other motives of society as a whole?

[Orrex]

31. I think it's a mistake to frame it simply as a money/no-money issue

The question as stated could as readily apply to the mom-and-pop candy store as to Walmart, and that's how I meant it.

Your point about crooks with an agenda is a good one; in retrospect, I should have stipulated that the "rules" set on private property can't themselves be against the law, but I didn't think to phrase it that way.

[RandomThoughts]

36. Well I used the term money since ownership of property as bought by money, for most is ownership.

And most people think of ownership as what you can buy with money.

I think there are many forms of ownership, a family farm around for many years and many generations has some claim to the land separate from money, as do people in society have claim to things like parks and natural habitats for social use.

So it really is not meant to be money / no money, but discussion on the concept many have that claims money defines ownership.



A person can do what they want in there house, but if a neighbor is in that house, they cant just hit them, since in some ways even in someone elses house, the neighbor still owns rights that are not purchased with money. So in a mom and pop grocery store the same things would apply from my comment.

My comment is equally applicable to a mom and pops, or a Wallmart.
At a mom and pops restaurant, should they be able to abuse an employee or customer just because they own the business? Should they have the right to do anything(anarchy) or are they also under some level of what society considers acceptable?

So when I say money, I am not talking just big money, but the concept of material ownership being the only defining factor.

It has a place, it adds a system for economies, but it does not always do well when guiding societal direction since its motive is missing moral components. Although most people, including those with money of coarse, are mostly good, and they themselves struggle with the amoral pull of money, versus social good, hence the reason rules can help, so people do not have to be mean or greedy to compete with the few low life business that do exist.

[DefenseLawyer]

30. And the sign said "long haired freaky people need not apply" n/t

[Igel]

35. Another ill-defined question.

It can't be answered because the answer is both "yes" and "no."

Apt. owner wants to keep unmarried couples out? No.

Store owner who wants to say "no handguns" and "shirts must be worn"? Yes.

As a public accommodation, some rights over the property are denied the owner. Others aren't. Moreover, it also varies by business: Some restrictions on behavior are reasonable in some contexts, not in others.

[Orrex]

37. I think perhaps the point of the poll was unclear

If I'd added a "yes/no," a "maybe," or an "other" option, then that's what everyone would have selected. However, based on the discussion that has resulted, I'd say that the poll is serving its purpose even with the binary format.


With that in mind, I agree with everything after the first sentence of your post. :hi:

[dsc]

60. not entirely sure of your first example

Is marital status a protected class under federal law?

[X_Digger]

39. Within limits, yes..

If the privately owned business is open to the public, there are certain accommodations that must be made (Americans with Disabilities Act) and certain discriminations that aren't legal. Another set of rules apply for employees, EEOC, OSHA, etc.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

44. Simple answer is no. A business can't make any rules they want.

There are thousands of regulations that businesses must follow. So they can make rules, as long as those rules are legal.

[Flaneur]

46. Can I allow smoking in my bar?

[dysfunctional press]

48. in places where it's legal, yes.

in places where it's illegal- no.

[dysfunctional press]

47. yes, definitely.

so does a homeowner.

(as long as the rules/behavior are lawful)

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

49. Yes, unless a legal exception exists.

Unless a legal exception exists, a private business reserves the right to refuse business to customers and may also ask someone to leave or be faced with trespassing charges.

[davsand]

53. They can set rules about behavior as long as they do not violate laws.

They can set rules about behavior but they cannot violate laws with those rules. By way of example, the apartheid laws of the old south are illegal so a business cannot force minorities to behave differently than white patrons...

Some "rules" are rooted in local public health laws (No shirt, no shoes, no service) and some are a matter of behavioral controls (NO Swearing allowed before 8 PM!) but they are allowable to a business owner. What is a gray zone, however is what constitutes "free speech" in a place of business. We have "protected" rights of free speech, however, some things are NOT protected such as yelling "FIRE!" in a movie theater.

Something I have always kind of wondered about is how protected is political speech in a business setting. I can see how THAT could lead to a lot of debate.



Laura

[Greyhound]

59. Not a yes/no question, this is a very sticky-gray area. Perfectly valid and reasonable

instances are easily found in both circumstances.

[RexS]

61. As long as they don't violate any laws, yes.

Of course.

[ClassWarrior]

64. Or deny any legally-held rights.

NGU.

[TransitJohn]

65. Most even slightly upscale nightlife hotspots have dress codes.

So, yes.

[izzybeans]

66. Sure, so long as those behaviors are publically lawful.

No household has the right to abuse its children, so no company has the right to endanger its employees or customers. We couldn't let them engage in child labor or blanket exploitation without the "strong arm of johnny law" reaching into the private realm. All else they are free to do.

Pay fair wages, create a safe work environment, produce quality products, etc. You are free to do that.