If I'm free to associate with whomever I choose, then I'm also free to reject association with whomever I choose to reject!!!
That's about as "natural" a right there is as "birds of a feather, flock together" and in nature they do it without restraint!!!
bump
Yes, I thought about whether this falls under that right, but I don’t think it does. Freedom of association is specifically about joining groups and associating with others, socially, religiously, or politically. It doesn’t really apply to business transactions between individuals.
Some right is in play here, no doubt, but I don’t think that is the one. I think this simply is a manifestation of the natural principle of liberty, explained by Hobbes in Leviathan thusly:
“LIBERTY, or freedom, signifieth properly the absence of opposition (by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion); and may be applied no less to irrational and inanimate creatures than to rational. For whatsoever is so tied, or environed, as it cannot move but within a certain space, which space is determined by the opposition of some external body, we say it hath not liberty to go further. And so of all living creatures, whilst they are imprisoned, or restrained with walls or chains; and of the water whilst it is kept in by banks or vessels that otherwise would spread itself into a larger space; we use to say they are not at liberty to move in such manner as without those external impediments they would. But when the impediment of motion is in the constitution of the thing itself, we use not to say it wants the liberty, but the power, to move; as when a stone lieth still, or a man is fastened to his bed by sickness.
And according to this proper and generally received meaning of the word, a freeman is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.”
So, clearly, if someone wishes not to do business with another, but they are not able to refuse, then they are hindered from doing their own will, and cannot be called a “freeman”. Their liberty has been curtailed.