California is seceding from the Constitution

Forget the ludicrous #Calexit movement — why should a state bother seceding when it can simply nullify the portions of the Constitution it doesn’t like? A troubling trend is emerging: California is imposing its own vision of free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of the press on its citizens, and it’s daring the courts to stop it.

The entire nation has of course watched as the city of Berkeley and the University of California, Berkeley ceded control over free speech to violent left-wing mobs. Both the city and the campus have placed the safety of rioters over the liberty of their conservative citizens, refusing to protect that liberty on the dubious grounds that someone might get hurt. Thus, city and school leaders have knowingly and intentionally granted a heckler’s veto to the far-left, in effect making the First Amendment a dead letter at one of the nation’s (and the world’s) most prominent universities.

The rot extends far beyond Berkeley. Just this week, the California assembly’s judiciary committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of AB 569, a bill that would prohibit religious employers from enforcing entirely normal rules of Christian conduct on their employees.