O Canada, What Is It You Don’t Get About Free Speech?

One of the easiest ways to appreciate the First Amendment is to imagine living without it.

That’s not hard to do if you travel across the border to British Columbia. Barry Neufeld, a former elected school trustee, was ordered by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal to pay a fine of over $750,000 for public comments criticizing transgender lessons in public schools.

The tribunal concluded that some of his statements amounted to hate speech and that others contributed to discrimination against LGBTQ teachers. They awarded the damages to members of the local teachers’ association who identified as LGBTQ. The tribunal called its fine “compensation for injury to dignity, feelings, and self-respect.”

What did Neufeld say that was so earth-shattering? He said that “letting little children choose to change genders is nothing short of child abuse.”

Many Americans will strongly disagree with what Neufeld said, maybe even be offended. Many, perhaps a majority, will agree. Polls show that Neufeld is hardly alone in Canada. Most Canadians oppose gender-reassignment surgery for minors and the vast majority oppose allowing trans-athletes to compete in women’s sports.

Agree or disagree, it is frightening to see the financial death penalty imposed on a man for what he said in a speech, in a Facebook post, and a widely circulated email.

Neufeld did not call for violence. He did not plant a bomb. He did not harass a person. He voiced an opinion that some found offensive.

The real danger is that of a government that actively seeks out dissenting opinions to punish. This danger extends to the imposition of crushing financial penalties on someone simply because officials conclude that his opinions on a matter of public controversy are beyond the pale.

That is precisely what our First Amendment exists to prevent. The First Amendment is not only a shield for speech we agree with or admire. In reality, it is most valuable when it protects speech that many people despise. Popular opinions rarely need constitutional protection. Unpopular ones do.

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized this principle. Whether the speaker is a civil-rights marcher, an anti-war protester, a religious evangelist, or an activist denouncing ICE, the government does not get to decide which viewpoints may be expressed in public debate. The answer to speech we dislike is more speech, not official punishment.

Once government acquires the power to impose ruinous penalties because it believes certain viewpoints are too offensive, that power will not remain confined to one issue or one ideology. Today’s target may be a critic of transgender policies. Tomorrow it could be a religious dissenter, an environmental activist, a labor organizer, a pro-Israel or a pro-Gaza activist, or a writer whose views offend those in power.
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Cases like this one from Canada remind us that constitutional guarantees of free speech are neither inevitable nor universal. They are a uniquely powerful safeguard against the temptation of every government to silence views it wants to brand as heresy.

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