While GoDaddy could be politically or morally motivated here, this just seems like a fair application of the policy.
ETA: I agree that that TOS provision is good and should be enforced, but it's no coincidence who gets the hammer for violating it.
Even if the fairness in terms of TOS accountability here is in practice unfair, I think leaving issues to bubble up organically rather than implementing some sort of heavy-handed machine moderation/content monitor system (looking at you, YouTube) is probably preferable.
I'm not sure what you mean by "better" or "nature". It sounds like you may have some form of structure in your thinking that clearly delineates "politics" from "business" and "morality". Can we explore that a little?
Do you consider it is the role of SCOTUS to be the moral arbiter of women's bodies?
If not, and SCOTUS has overreached, whose role is it to push back against SCOTUS' activism?
Nobody?
Everybody?
Somebody?
The answers to these questions are not mathematical, scientific, or technical. They are political.
If your "better nature" excludes companies from participating in the political process, how does it feel about companies donating to political parties e.g. to facilitate the building of oil pipelines across exempt areas of land, or to rezone land for mega warehouses, or to bust unions, or to facilitate casinos?
(As a commenter says above though, I do think that in this particular case the takedown was probably not politically motivated.)
Many people do structure their thinking that way for the simple reason that business molds itself to it's container; the shape of which was previously defined by a combo of politics and technological feasibility.
>Do you consider it is the role of SCOTUS to be the moral arbiter of women's bodies?
No, but they are the legal one. Two different things there.
>Who should push back?
Citizens have duly elected representatives and Senators to sort that out. The continued conscious decision not to sort it out, is alas, a Hallmark of the carefully laid checks and balances of our system to keep the frivolous or overly controversial from getting rolled into the law of the land... Nope, couldn't keep a straight face. Intent is there though.
>If your "better nature" excludes companies from participating in the political process, how does it feel about companies donating to political parties e.g. to facilitate the building of oil pipelines across exempt areas of land, or to rezone land for mega warehouses, or to bust unions, or to facilitate casinos?
The political landscape is arguably better off without business being able to directly effect it via campaign donations/lobbying/writing bills. Business should inform. Not drive, politics.
I also find companies making political donations at the behest of management to be suspect, especially since no one generally asks the laborer where the company should rout their political interest slush pile.
Not that I was asked. Just had an answer in mind and figured I'd share.
All SCOTUS has done is decline pre-enforcement review of the Texas Law on threshold grounds that won't apply once there is an actual enforcement action; while this is hugely significant in practical impact, it very much does not address the moral, or even legal, status of the law itself.
(Now, is the Texas Legislature overreaching and setting itself as the moral arbiter of women’s bodies? That's another question.)
Right.
SCOTUS chose not to answer the question, even though it is the only institution that can speak to it authoritatively.
“Not to Speak Is to Speak. Not to Act Is to Act.”
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
As far as I know, the question hasn’t even been asked of SCOTUS. All that was asked was for an injunction against the law while it goes through the lower courts.
Your question about the supreme Court by its nature is invalid. Supreme Court interprets or applies the laws under the constitutional framework. It is the people or their elected representatives that establish the laws. The supreme Court does not become an arbiter of women's bodies ever. The people or by proxy the people's Representatives may do this by having passed laws and the supreme Court determines the constitutionality of those laws. Now if you were to say the Constitution could become the arbiter of women's bodies that is a possibility, as the amendment process would allow for this.
Supreme Court activism is another buzzword used by people of all kinds of political persuasions. It has become that anyone who disagrees with a supreme Court ruling simply calls them as Court activism. There are cases that I have disagreed with but I believe it is a lot of hyperbole to toss around a supreme court activism. If there is supreme Court activism the remedy is constitutional amendments.
I do not believe that companies as an entity should be politically active. This is one of those areas where the supreme Court disagrees and has granted companies as an entity to have the legal right of freedom of speech and participation in the political process effectively unrestricted. I do not know how they reached the conclusion that companies as an entity are granted personhood and therefore the enumerated rights granted to peoples but they did. It's quite evident when you follow the money in politics that laws that companies tend to support almost always pass regardless of the popular support of people. When there are laws that have massive popular support of the people but the companies do not support they rarely pass. This shows that there is not equal representation. A company does not have the representation power of an individual person it has the representation power of all of their employees and the monetary power that those employees generate but the company often does not follow the political ideals of their employees.
That's an interesting comment - "invalid". I was asking for your opinion when I asked "Do you consider it is the role of SCOTUS to be the moral arbiter of women's bodies?"
How can it be invalid to ask for your opinion?
Perhaps you meant it would be irrelevant what anybody's opinion was of the role of SCOTUS because in your schema, the role of SCOTUS is prescribed as "Supreme Court interprets or applies the laws under the constitutional framework." For you, perhaps that is absolutely clear and precise, and not at all subjective or political.
But have you considered that SCOTUS has discretion about which cases it chooses to hear? In this case, the Texas legislature has passed a law that the applicant tried to challenge as unconstitutional.
Is the legislation unconstitutional, and if so, how?
We don't know, and we haven't been informed at all by SCOTUS because it decided 5-4 not to hear this case.
The thing is we have a law that sharply limits the possibilities of the kind of law you want; that law is the First Amendment.
No one is entitled to a platform. Let the Texans receive snail mail reporting folks for attempting to exercise their rights, or others attempting to help them exercise their rights.
This is a completely different thing. They were not asking GoDaddy to create their website or perform any task other than the hosting of it which is the selling of the cake. If GoDaddy chose not to create the website and instead referred them to other places for their creative work that would be the correct comparison. This is the lack of History that we seem to have in this country currently.
No, he refused to make any cake at all for the event for which one waa sought, explicitly because it was a same sex wedding. Artwork was not the issue:
---quote---
Phillips informed the couple that he does not “create” wedding cakes for same-sex weddings. Ibid. He explained, “I’ll make your birthday cakes, shower cakes, sell you cookies and brownies, I just don’t make cakes for same sex weddings.”
---end quote---
MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD., ET AL. v. COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION ET AL. 584 US ____ (2018), No. 16-111, slip op. @ 4 (Sup.Ct., June 4, 2018) https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
The law, as it currently stands, cannot force a technology provider to provide a platform for content if they prefer not to host it.
My point is this excessive moral arbitration that causes the exclusion of people and entities from society is a very dangerous path to head down. We should want individuals to make moral and political decisions and participate in the processes that allow for change and remediation. By having companies both large and small become the moral arbiters and forcibly excluding people from the participation in society will only ever end badly.
> My point is this excessive moral arbitration that causes the exclusion of people and entities from society is a very dangerous path to head down. We should want individuals to make moral and political decisions and participate in the processes that allow for change and remediation. By having companies both large and small become the moral arbiters and forcibly excluding people from the participation in society will only ever end badly.
Some people and entities should be excluded due to incompatibility (broadly speaking, but would include human rights beliefs, harming others, etc). Their participation is not in good faith. They are not attempting to have a debate or a discussion, but are attempting to rule through tyranny. In this example, Texan conservatives are ramming through legislation to enforce their belief system on the women of Texas. They are simply running up against the consequences of such (distasteful, unethical) behavior, and as conservatives, you would think they're comfortable with the idea of personal responsibility and business freedom, and consequently are prepared to face the repercussions of their decisions.
You can have a conversation, a discussion, or a debate of ideas with a rational actor operating in good faith; you punch a bully in the face.
The executive branch isn’t going to take any actions that support Texas in this matter from an antitrust perspective (Biden’s comments have made it exceptionally clear where they stand on Texas’ legislation as an assault on the rights of women).
Otherwise women wouldn't be voting in the US still.
Classic. "They" want to take away your rights, off course. The shadowy malicious, always scheming in secrecy, always forcing companies' hands to crack down and decide things that have nothing to do with them.
This is not flirting with fascism at all. (Not until it's used against you, at any rate.)
Allowing corporations to make decisions on moral, ethical or political grounds isn't at odds with your framing of individual agency. If corporations (or other organized entities) do something that most associated individuals find to be truly against their moral and political sensibilities, then in a world where individual agency matters the way you imply it does, people would simply dissociate from the company/organization at some point.
I doubt that will happen with any kind of scale in this case, as there are some behaviors and beliefs that - while legal - are generally viewed as undesirable, and aren't going to garner any support from your average employee. Doxxing and harassing women seeking abortions is just one of many such cases.
Also, we could pick easier discussions like how religious organizations have broad freedoms to discriminate against gay individuals, such as by firing gay employees or evicting gay students. There it becomes clear that religious rights have a very special place in law, and that gay marital benefits by the likes of Microsoft or Google is simply an expression of soft company power.
Furthermore, gay protections exist at the federal level largely due to a previous Supreme Court with a Sandra Day O'Connor acting as a pivotal vote. It is not obvious how Lawrence v Texas, which legalized gay sex, would've turned out in today's court.
That was not the decision, though it appears to be a common misconception. The decision was that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had exhibited hostility towards religion and that wasn't allowed. They didn't rule on free speech grounds.
Since this is not the first time GoDaddy has done similar things I do not know why anyone would continue to use GoDaddy for anything. I want the employees of GoDaddy to be politically active and participate in the democratic process but I do not GoDaddy as a company to be the moral arbiter of things.
The CEO of GoDaddy, maybe not the current one I haven't kept up on things, has had his own troubles yet I don't recall him getting completely canceled by the company. This kind of Jim Crowesque behavior from companies always ends badly. This is literally what happens when people are single issue zealots. They seem completely incapable of understanding that the reasoning that they apply against their single issue will eventually turn around and be used against them.
What we need is laws that companies cannot be moral arbiters. If companies do choose to become moral arbiters then all protections against them are removed. You cannot cancel someone because you do not like what they say and then turn it right around and claim common carrier status therefore you are not responsible for something else you're hosting. Yeah this is what we see repeatedly with a number of these companies they wish to feign ignorance and common carrier status but they also wish to selectively police things.