“Congress shall make no law” is the text of the first amendment, which is in regard to limiting free expression, not expanding it.
Do you think making it illegal for employers to discriminate against their employees based on their race is a violation of the employers’ rights?
If I own my own business and I'm the only employee, let's say a plumbing business. For years I did my own work, own accounting, own taxes, etc. I decide to add an apprentice who I hire in full time. This apprentice starts evangelizing his political views while on jobs. This turns off customers and doesn't agree with my political views. I don't want my employee to do this. It is not my point of view and it's affecting business. Now in your world, I can't fire this person, or tell him to stop. But by not being allowed to fire this person, and allowing his speech to continue via my company, the government is forcing me and my property to endorse his speech. Why stop there? Why can't I put a Trump sign in my neighbors yard?
Now we're in a contradiction. Who's right to speech matters more in a private setting? Typically the owner of said private setting. By and large, this is true. Does this lead to sticky situations where people are profiled racially? Yes. But I'm not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
> Do you think making it illegal for employers to discriminate against their employees based on their race is a violation of the employers’ rights?
Do you think it making it legal for an employee to bark racist words towards their minority colleagues all day at work is a good idea? Because under your free speech rule, that would be OK. Oh look, another contradiction. In any case, we have laws for these scenarios that are largely constitutional because the constitution largely ignores these private settings, thus it is up to us to legislate, hence we have laws on discrimination.
In “my world” where free speech is protected as a civil right, you would be allowed to fire an employee who is using his position to evangelize instead of doing his job. In my world the employee is simply protected from being fired for having a dissenting view when sharing their view in a forum where that would be otherwise appropriate. Or people cannot be censored on social networks for sharing inconvenient truths to any political side.
We already have laws that restrict discrimination in the workplace, setting it up so that protecting free speech in the work place necessarily contradicts that is either intentionally dishonest or an unintentional demonstration of lack of imagination.
The reality is that it’s possible and moral to legislate the protection of free speech civil rights without harmfully violating the employers’ rights. You just don’t believe in free speech civil rights.
Freedom of speech means the government will not target you for expressing your opinion. It does not mean that your employer has to tolerate it. If I write an op-ed about how my employer makes a shoddy product, they are well within their legal rights to conduct their business how they see fit and terminate their business relationship with me. You seem to confuse freedom of speech with freedom from consequence of speech.
Free speech is already a civil right. You are not talking about free speech. So employees would not be allowed to quit working for an employer because that employer used their free speech to support a position they were morally opposed to? Anti-discrimination laws almost exclusively protect who you are i.e. race, gender, nationality, religion, physical ability. Free speech is about the viewpoints you choose to express and the actions you choose to take. You have the freedom to speak and act how you choose, but I also have the freedom hear you and choose how I interact with you or choose not to at all. You can’t legislate that person A is free to speak but person B is not free to react to that speech, as you are restricting the basic freedom of person B. Of course, when B uses their speech and A is not free to react, you are now restricting everyone’s freedom and everyone loses their freedom. As opposed to not legislating the speech or the reactions to that speech and individuals have the freedom to make their own choices and live with the consequences of those choices.