California Democrats have no idea how to define "hate speech," but they are going to mandate anti-hate speech training for companies with five or more employees.
What's flabbergasting is that they don't care how hate speech is defined. They want to train employees not to speak it anyway.
And if that seems unreasonable or just plain dumb, at least the law will be on the books for someone to be prosecuted for violating it.
Note that "hate speech" is not illegal in the United States of America. It may be impolite. It may be irritating. It may even generate intense anger. But hate speech, like almost all speech, is constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. It's also protected by the California Constitution.
Current California law requires companies with five or more employees to teach two hours of sexual harassment training for supervisors and one hour for all employees every two years. AB 1803 would pile on two hours of employee training in "hate speech" prevention.
"AB 1803 is about making our workplaces safer, more respectful, and more inclusive for everyone," notes a press release from Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal (D–Long Beach). "Hate speech has no place on the job, just as sexual harassment has no place on the job. By incorporating anti-hate speech training into existing sexual harassment prevention programs, we are building on a proven framework to address harmful behavior before it escalates."
Are they including hate speech training because sexual harassment training works so well? I'll get back to you on that.
What the world really doesn't need, it should be noted, is more state-mandated nagging about the allegedly naughty activities we shouldn't engage in. As PBS's Rhana Natour reported in 2018, "there's little evidence that sexual harassment training works." A 2016 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report concluded that "much of the training done over the last 30 years has not worked as a prevention tool—it's been too focused on simply avoiding legal liability." Research by Justine Tinkler, a sociologist at the University of Georgia, found that such training mostly reinforces traditional views of sex roles by portraying men as predators and women as victims. But training is an effective time suck.
"Hate speech itself is not illegal but can violate employment law if it rises to an actionable level of workplace harassment or discrimination," writes Reason's J.D. Tuccille. That's why employers actually embrace this nonsense; it gets them off the hook if sexual harassment rises to an actionable level. "Well, we had a training session about that, so it's not our fault," is all the cover employers need in most cases.
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"'Hate speech' includes speech protected by the First Amendment — speech the government has no business trying to snuff out with legal mandates," point out Adam Goldstein and Greg Gonzalez of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). "But also, it has no clear or consistent definition. Because of that vagueness, efforts to regulate 'hate speech' risk giving the government sweeping authority to suppress views it doesn't like."
Indeed, that's what happened in Germany.
That's not a hypothetical possibility—it's reality in countries that have adopted hate speech laws. Robert Habeck, an official in Germany's last government, was infamous for wielding the country's restrictive speech laws against his critics. "German Economy Minister Robert Habeck has filed complaints over 730 cases of criminal hate speech since April last year," Politico's Nette Nöstlinger reported in 2024. A few of the cases involved actual threats, but many others were sparked by insults such as referring to Habeck as a "professional idiot."
Current Chancellor Freidrich Merz continues that tradition; his government pressed charges against a man who called the politician "Pinocchio." With around 300 such prosecutions underway, a German court recently ordered the government to disclose which prosecutors are handling the cases.
Imagine making it illegal to call a politician "an idiot." They may as well make it illegal to breathe.
This is the nanny state on steroids. Being unable to define what is being proscribed is the hallmark of authoritarianism, where the 'crime' is whatever the bureaucrat says it is at that moment. I would hope that this law will be challenged in record time and be filed in the waste basket where it belongs.
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