California court strikes down law against "misgendering" speechhttps://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/07/19/california-court-strikes-down-law-against-misgendering-speech-n402972There was a decision rendered on Friday in the California Court of Appeal that will impact some portions of the ongoing debates over transgender rights and free speech. The catch here is that the state law in question, California Health & Safety Code § 1439.51, applies only to employees of long-term healthcare facilities such as nursing homes and hospitals. But even in that limited scope, it provides another bit of precedent that may wind up applying to the large backlog of similar cases currently making their way through the system.
In the case of Taking Offense v. California, the plaintiffs were challenging the constitutionality of the portion of the law that makes it a criminal offense to repeatedly “misgender” a patient in the facility by referring to them using the pronoun appropriate for their biological gender and not the gender they “identify” as. At Reason, Eugene Volokh identifies the applicable portion of the law and breaks down the court’s ruling.
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The state attempted to argue that the law was actually content-neutral because the employer was not forcing the employee to use either pronoun, leaving them the option of avoiding the use of pronouns entirely. The court shot that argument down as well, saying that the First Amendment was quite clear on this aspect of the argument.
CA hasn't had a relatively conservative governor since Deukmejian in the 1980s, so this being a free speech case had to have been grossly obvious even to Lib/Prog judges.
