That’s ridiculous. A copy machine owner has rights, but that’s not really relevant here.
The First Amendment, again, offers free speech protection from government interference. It doesn’t guarantee that another private citizen has to provide you with a figurative bullhorn.
The cake baking issue is based on public accommodations, not freedom of speech.
I’m pointing out the conflict between PRIVATE PROPERTY and PUBLIC ACCOMMODATION, and I’m looking at Office Depot knowing they generally do copy jobs for everyone that comes through the door with papers to copy and money to spend, and there’s a reason why that extends beyond profit motive. I note that Office Depot is a PUBLICLY HELD, PUBLICLY TRADED corporate enterprise (http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/odp); that this is not a PRIVATE, Sole Proprietorship we have in view, here.
With that in mind, I understand that there are rights retained by the owner of a PRIVATE enterprise that are NOT retained by the owner of a PUBLIC enterprise. The process of “going public” COSTS a few things, and not all of them are calculated in dollars and cents; you really do “sell your soul” in some respects taking a company public, and THIS is a textbook example of how that works out in practice. In going to “the market” to get access to PUBLIC funding, one yields the right to PRIVATE PROPERTY — having made it de facto PUBLIC PROPERTY, now — and is now therefore beholden to the demand to make PUBLIC ACCOMMODATION. You simply cannot say to the public, “I’ll take your investment money but not your business”; that dog won’t hunt. Office Depot has anti-abortion investors, and gay investors, and Christian investors, and Muslim investors — they can’t turn around and say, “We serve everyone except...” and single out a member of a specific group.
[Arguably, IF they knew a patron had ties to, say, Hamas, they could legitimately refuse service on the basis of conformity to Federal Laws against funding terrorism, but that’s a far cry from this particular case, and they’d likely still have a big legal fight on their hands over doing so.]
The Bottom Line as I see it: this situation is NOT a PRIVATE property rights issue, but a PUBLIC ACCOMMODATION issue. The proprietor, operating a publicly held enterprise, and having made his publicly held facility available to accommodate the public on a for hire basis, has determined to accommodated everyone but one individual.
In a PRIVATE setting, that’s fine. Office Depot ISN’T such a setting.
Case closed.