As I said before, I think if any company was shown to openly embrace the ideology of white supremacy, they would be subjected to significant market pressure (B2B and B2C) - I'm certain Cloudflare would have lost significant customer base if they continued a business relationship while Stormfront was promoting the idea that Cloudflare was ideologically aligned. They said as much. Some more info on this if you want to read it. https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/

I think a very similar calculus was performed at the rest of the companies you accuse of engaging in "censorship." They decided to make terminations based on disruptive behavior, instead of allowing the market to act on a perceived warmth towards an unpalatable ideology through their inaction.

So now we have a (second) clear framework and remedy for your objections. The companies are free to take action to protect their business, and those "censored" should sue to prove discrimination. (The first remedy being to simply work with companies who are favorable to the ideology). This is an entirely separate concept from a "duty to serve," so I'm glad we've made progress on that also. Unfortunately, this still requires that holding an ideology itself is a protected class.

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I'll be honest, I'm not really sure if it should be a protected class or not. I understand the fear of oppression driving your argument, and I recognize that oppression is typically the reason we adopt anti-discrimination classes. However it's important to note that this is mainly a fear and not a widespread reality, like it was for the rest of the protected classes. These laws are an absolute necessity (at the moment) for them. (Just as an aside, I really did not appreciate your rhetoric that conflated my trepidation here with uncertainty around existing anti-discrimination laws. I mean I think you've made some effort here to silence whatever gerbil is running through your head trying to turn everything I say into the most extreme strawman argument, but some progress remains to be gained apparently.)

Having said that, I can clearly see the harm in allowing it to be a protected class. First is that it is obviously a demonstration of the content of your character, which I believe is reasonable grounds for judgement. On top of this, there is a legitimate slippery slope argument to be made. For example, holding Nazi ideology clearly conflicts with the anti-discrimination rights of others. So you fire a Nazi, and a court decides that was the right move because the others in the room would face greater harm through his presence. What if he said, actually, I'm a rainbow Nazi and I think white men are superior, but everyone else is welcome in my tent as a 2nd class citizen and would otherwise be guaranteed freedom from discrimination. After all, there doesn't seem to be much of a standard of proof that your stated ideology is equivalent to your actual beliefs, or even real.

Changing that to "affiliation" instead of "ideology" would do some work to prevent this. Adding a caveat that your protected affiliation can't be fundamentally based on discrimination against other classes would also do some work. (It would also invalidate your examples further, because they wouldn't meet these qualifications.)

If I were making the rules today, I'd probably throw it out, along with religious protection. I think the necessity for anti-discrimination based on religion, in this century, is mostly covered under race/ethnicity. I think, some century in the future, the notion that racial discrimination laws are necessary might also become debatable. As an aside, I think that there's an argument to be made in favor of religious protection, in that it's possible for it to NOT require advocacy for systemic change / be entirely personal. I think that distinction should be considered along with applying this protection.

I think in DC (where they use the term affiliation), it makes some sense for local reasons.

I think in Seattle (where they use the term ideology), it's ridiculous and largely solves a problem they didn't have, and creates new ones in the process. There's talk of repealing it.

What I'm sure of is that for this to be adopted, it would require pretty wide support across the spectrum. A constitutional amendment, supermajority realm of support. Given my arguments above, I just don't see us there yet. I can't find any evidence of existing broad support.

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