This article was originally published by Wanjiru Njoya at The Mises Institute.
Murray Rothbard conceptualized liberty as an emanation of property rights and self-ownership. Freedom of association is, therefore, best understood as “a subset of private property rights.” Just as property rights are absolute and limited only by respect for other people’s property rights, freedom of association is absolute and constrained only by other people’s freedom to associate or not associate with whom they will.
Unless we are all to live as slaves, human interaction should always be voluntary. The correct ethical principle is that no one should be forced to associate or not associate with others against his or her will. It follows that the antidiscrimination principle is incompatible with freedom of association. The civil rights framework of rules based on “protected grounds” such as race, sex, or religion, violates freedom of association in two ways. First, by coercing people into associating with others against their will, for example, by imposing “disparate impact” penalties for failing to achieve racial or gender “equity” in employment. Second, by forbidding people from associating with those of their choice, for example, by constraining a landlord’s freedom to choose his own tenants. The Fair Housing Act “prohibits discrimination by direct providers of housing, such as landlords and real estate companies as well as other entities, such as municipalities, banks or other lending institutions and homeowners insurance companies.”
These restrictions on freedom of association were originally justified as necessary to enable everyone to have the benefit of private property and contractual freedom. However, economists such as Walter E. Williams have shown that there is no empirical evidence of barriers to participation, at least not after the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1964, and later the repeal of Jim Crow laws in the 1960s. A new justification
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