re: Is MLK's Civil Rights Act Constitutional?

quote:

---

do you believe a private business should have the right to refuse service to someone based solely on their race or skin color?

---

Under our constitutional system, the federal government has only those powers assigned to it by the constitution, and the constitution does not give the federal government power to dictate to individuals with whom they must do business.

Whether a state government has that power is a different question entirely.

In either case, the market certainly has the power to punish any business which chooses to display such overt racism.

That hypothetical ER physician would probably be violating the Hippocratic oath by refusing to treat that child, and he should lose his license as a result. But the federal government should not compel him. That is simply not the role of the federal government in our system.

The federal government simply does not have the power constitutionally to do everything that “seems like a good idea.“. The notion that the federal government has that much power is what got us into the current mess to begin with.