Nathan B. Hannah, attorney
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I WANT TO RANT JUST A BIT ON THE NOTION THAT THE GOVERNMENT CAN POLICE MY DECISIONS IN GIVING AWAY MY PROPERTY

9/13/2016

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I wrote a few days ago about a case in which a woman asked a court to invalidate her father's will because its contents were was motivated by religious bias, and should therefore be disallowed under antidiscrimination law.  How could antidiscrimination law possibly apply to what someone puts in his or her will?  Even if the will in question had contained a provision that said, “I am disinheriting my daughter because she married a Jewish man,” isn’t that a private decision?  
Maybe if I put it in terms of choices a parent makes in dealing with his or her children, my point will be more clear: if a parent disapproves of something his child did, and decides that he doesn’t want to give that child something as a result (I’m talking about an emancipated child, not a dependent child), does the government have the power to second-guess that decision and overrule it if the decision was made for a bad reason?    
If your answer to that question is yes, where does the government’s power stop?  What if the parent’s decision to not give something to the child was due to the child using alcohol or tobacco?  Or what if it was because the child joined the American Nazi Party, or the Communist Party?  
Maybe it's easier to say someone should be free to disinherit a child who joined the Nazi Party, than it is to say someone should be free to disinherit a child who married a Jew, but should the government be trying to police those kinds of decisions?  
As an aside: if it’s ok to “discriminate” against a Nazi, why isn’t it ok to prevent the Nazis from holding public events?
If you start down this path, you are inevitably going to give the government the power to decide what motives are off limits in a person’s private decisions on how to dispose of his or her property.  Isn’t that getting kinda close to making the government, the thought police?
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