MaddowBlog-AG Pam Bondi eyes case against Office Depot employee who wouldn't print Charlie Kirk flyer

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The attorney general’s “hate speech” comments were a mess. Her line on an Office Depot employee with personal objections to Kirk made the mess worse.

AG Pam Bondi eyes case against Office Depot employee who wouldn’t print Charlie Kirk flyer
The attorney general’s “hate speech” comments were a mess. Her line on an Office Depot employee with personal objections to Kirk made the mess worse.
Read in MSNBC: apple.news/AtFMq9yaMQ5y...

👉seriously 🤦👈

— (@enuffsaysv.bsky.social) 2025-09-17T18:50:20.228Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/ag-pam-bondi-eyes-case-office-depot-employee-wouldnt-print-charlie-kir-rcna231860

Complicating matters, however, these weren’t the only problematic comments from the Florida Republican. The New York Times reported on what Bondi went on to say hours after the controversial podcast interview.

In an interview on Fox News’s ‘Hannity’ late Monday, Ms. Bondi suggested that she might direct the Justice Department’s civil rights division to ‘prosecute’ businesses if they turned away customers who wanted to print pictures of Mr. Kirk for memorial vigils, citing the case of an Office Depot employee in Michigan who was fired for rejecting such an order.

.......Just so we’re all clear, this isn’t exactly conservative orthodoxy. When state officials in Colorado sanctioned a baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018, conservatives sided with the baker, arguing that if a private business wants to discriminate on the basis of personal beliefs, it should be able to do so. (Spoiler alert: The high court's conservative justices agreed.)

Bondi, however, apparently believes it’s a federal civil rights violation if an Office Depot employee had personal objections to Kirk and didn’t want to print fliers with his picture.

[Sanity Claws]

1. She should claim that her religious beliefs

prevented her from printed the materials. If the religious exemption is good for doctors and pharmacists, it should be good for workers at Office Depot.

[MrWowWow]

2. It's Animal Farm Time!

-Where some pigs living and dead, are more equal than others.
__________
Let's get right to it:

U.S. civil rights and anti-discrimination law:

1. Refusing to print someone’s flyer (content-based refusal):
A private printer or print shop generally has the legal right to decline a job if they object to the message or content of the flyer (for example, political, religious, or offensive speech). Courts usually treat this as an exercise of free speech or free association. Businesses are not legally required to produce expressive content they disagree with, unless a state or local law says otherwise.

2. Refusing to serve a Black person in a restaurant (status-based refusal):
This is explicitly prohibited by federal law — most importantly, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title II, which bans discrimination in places of public accommodation (restaurants, hotels, theaters, etc.) on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. Here, the refusal is not about the content of what someone wants produced but about the person’s protected characteristic, and that is unlawful.

Key legal distinction:

Content-based refusal (flyer): Usually protected under free speech rights, provided it applies to the message and not to the identity of the customer.

Status-based refusal (restaurant): Illegal discrimination under civil rights statutes when based on protected classes such as race.

[maxrandb]

3. Maybe more like Lord of the Flies

or, the Negan Cult in The Walking Dead.

I actually thought the Latimore Family from Game of Thrones was "fictional", but it's got all the Donnie Dipshit cult characteristics; incest, pedophilia, sexual assault, corruption, violence, cruelty and fealty.

Check, check, check, check, check, check and check.

[jmowreader]

4. Simple and effective way to solve this

"I need you to print 500 copies of a picture of Charlie Kirk."

"Do you have copyright clearance for this?"

"Uh...no."

"Then I'm sorry but I can't legally print this."