Whole Foods in the Brave New World.

• Author: Lemieux, Pierre

A case before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) illustrates the importance of private property for a private company --in fact, for anybody because corporations are not owned by ghosts or rocks.

The case is about the right of grocery chain Whole Foods Market to impose a dress code that prevents its employees, on the company's property, from wearing anything with a political or ideological slogan such as "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) or "Make America Great Again" (MAGA). The dress code requires clothing and related items (masks, pins, buttons, and such) to be "without any visible symbol, flag, slogan, message, logo or advertising."

Some employees in a dozen stores across the country refused to remove their BLM apparel, making them subject to disciplinary measures. Many apparently left the company instead of complying. Some complained to the NLRB, claiming they were "engaged in concerted activities for the purposes of mutual aid and protection by raising concerns about working conditions, including by wearing Black Lives Matter messaging at work." By prohibiting that, they claimed, Whole Foods violated the 1935 National Labor Relations Act.

By the time you read this article, the "trial" should have been held under an NLRB administrative judge. As typical of powerful regulators, the NLRB is both the prosecutor and the judge.

Avoiding constant conflict / Elizabeth Nolan Brown, who reported on the issue in Reason, noted that a ruling for the plaintiffs could result in a special carve-out for BLM while allowing employers to continue prohibiting other political and ideological slogans. Or, "alternately, it could allow any type of political messaging, but something tells me supporters of the staff wearing BLM gear wouldn't be so happy to buy groceries from a guy in a MAGA mask," she notes. Why stop there? Imagine that store customers were greeted with "Let's go Brandon!" or a proclamation that "Fetal Lives Matter," "Blue Lives Matter," or some other political opinion.

In a previous suit over the same dress code provision, Whole Foods employees claimed that preventing them from proselytizing for BLM was discriminatory on the basis of race. Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs ruled against that claim, noting that "there is no right to free speech in a private workplace."

Both cases are ultimately about property rights, whose function is precisely to avoid constant conflicts in society, to prevent individuals from continuously...