What are the moral limits of freedom of association?

The fickle Gods of peer review have directed me to turn my critical eye toward this article. Wellman defends the possibility of highly restrictive immigration policy, up to and including, potentially, rejecting any and all legitimate political refugees, on freedom of association grounds. It’s a clever argument and well executed, but I’m inclined to think the analogy fails on a number of grounds (some of Sarah Fine identifies here). For one thing: a central feature of freedom of association of association is the right to end that association. It’s not clear to me that states have that right: banishment (of citizens) is generally understood as an anachronism; not a right that modern states have. More importantly, while large associations can ban sub-associations that conflict with their larger mission (such as Catholic University can, for example, ban student atheist clubs) the state is something other than a large association with many sub-associations beneath it. It also has a mandate to protect the freedom of association of its citizens, in addition whatever right it has to exercise it, and it seems to me there are good reasons to think the former should trump the latter. Regardless of whether the argument is successful or not, the paper is a good reminder about the general status of freedom of association in a liberal society–namely, that liberal norms protect it fiercely but regulate its exercise lightly. With limited exceptions, the reasons you might choose to enter into (or terminate) a business partnership, or join/leave a club or church are yours alone, and your reasons need not reflect strictly liberal values for you to maintain your standing as a good liberal citizen. While I don’t think Wellman’s analogy works, he’s right to remind us that liberal norms protect illiberal exercises of freedom of association.

Back to Eich: assume his resignation was indeed forced by the board, and was a direct response to the negative publicity surrounding his Prop 8 donation. For this to be an injustice, we’d need to identify one of two things: either unjust acts or an unjust rule. I’ve not heard anyone suggest the latter exists here, so someone must be behaving lawfully but unjustly. Since as far as I can tell no major gay rights groups organized a campaign or made a public statement against Eich (if I’m wrong about this please correct me), it must be those people, acting individually, exercising their own freedom of speech and association. I scrolled through around the first ~100 hits in a “mozilla boycott” google search; virtually everything was right-wingers talking up a post-resignation boycott. The only exceptions were a few references to OKcupid’s marketing gimmick and a startup called Rarebit, whose founders explain their decision to withdraw from future partnerships with Mozilla in light of Eich’s hire here. Rarebit’s founders were recently married; which helped one of them get a green card. So Eich’s political activity was an attempt to make not just their marriage but their business impossible. Note that there is no call for organizing a larger boycott here; merely an explanation of their decision.

Perhaps there’s a case to be made that it was immoral for Rarebit’s founders to use their freedom of association to decline to associate with someone who petitioned the state to revoke their marriage and threaten their business (and freedom of speech to explain why). But it’s difficult for me to see what such a case might look like. Any time we criticize others for immoral behavior, or decline to associate with others for immoral behavior, we impose reputational costs on them, and the scope of those reputational costs are ultimately beyond our control. Any case that Rarebits’ owners were out of line would, it seems to me, have implications more chilling for freedom of speech and association than Eich’s resignation could possibly have.

My question, for those who feel Eich’s resignation constitutes an injustice, is this: if you discovered your boss or business partner spent $1000 of the money you helped him earn to petition the state to nullify your marriage, would you feel duty-bound to refrain from making any changes to your business arrangement out of concern for his freedom?