WildIrish,
Reasonable questions. I shall respond to each separately.
Quote:
|
I'm not compelling or coercing...I'm simply calling upon someone to perform the service they claim to offer. If a convenience store advertises Hood milk at $2.39 per gallon, I expect to be able to purchase it without having to worry about the lactose intolerant vegan behind the register deciding for me that I shouldn't be drinking it.
|
Staying with your example, the pharmacy in question wishes to continue to not offer the milk you wish to purchase. The State, through the policing arm of the licensing board is attempting to compel the pharmacists to offer the milk. If they continue to not offer the milk, they will be punished. Note that the only people being compelled to do anything are the pharmacists, and that they are being coerced into engaging in behavior, selling milk in your example, they wish to avoid.
Note also that in this scenario, the one which the pharmacists and pharmacy in question are advancing, you are not being compelled to purchase anything at all from the pharmacy.
Nothing at all. This non-coercive relationship enables you, and others who share your POV to withdraw your business from this pharmacy and any other which fails to meet your standards, and rewards any pharmacy which does. Let us, for the sake of argument take as given that most people share your POV and not that of these “refuseniks”. What do you think will happen? The pharmacy in question will loose business proportionate to that fraction of the market which agrees with you. If you and yours are 100% in the right, the pharmacy will do what any rational business will do – it will stoke the products its customers want it to stock – or it will close its doors.
For an example that this technique works, you need look no further than at the time slot that Don Inmus used to fill.
I think this describes the position these plaintiffs have adopted – coercion is unnecessary. They (and seemingly their employer) feel that there is enough room for both positions. The particular legal technique they are employing, that Federal law supersedes State law, is the way that they feel will most likely rule in their favor.