UK Banks Commit to "the Principle of Non-Discrimination Based on Lawful Freedom of Expression" as to Clients

From The Independent (UK):

Economic secretary Andrew Griffith told the bosses of some of the UK's biggest banks on Wednesday that it is important to protect freedom of expression….

It came after former politician Nigel Farage's bank account with Coutts—a bank for the ultra wealthy—was closed.

The account was shut after Mr Farage's mortgage payments came to an end. Due to extra checks on so-called politically exposed persons (PEPs), Mr Farage and other politicians are expensive to provide services to.

Therefore, when he had paid off his mortgage he fell below Coutts' "commercial criteria" basis. The bank cited this, and his public profile as an at times controversial figure with opinions which it said clashed with the bank, as the reasons for why it terminated his account….

 

The Treasury said the bank bosses at the meeting had committed to "the principle of non-discrimination based on lawful freedom of expression."

The financial companies represented at the meeting were apparently Barclays UK, HSBC UK, Lloyds, Nationwide, NatWest, and Santander UK.

In the U.S., banks are generally forbidden from discriminating based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and the like, but not based on political beliefs. A recent Florida statute, however, does generally forbid financial entities from discriminating against people based on those people's "opinions, speech, or affiliations." Likewise, local ordinances in some places (such as Champaign, Illinois ban discrimination in "credit transactions" based on, among other things, "belonging to or endorsing any political party or organization or taking part in any activities of a political nature").

For other laws (mostly local ordinances) that ban discrimination by various other businesses based on patrons' political activity, see here.

Comments

[AmosArch]

when conservatives are getting screwed by business:
bUild uR oWn gLoBal FiNanCial sYsTem.

when progs are getting mildly inconvenienced (or more likely trolling for the one shop in the county that won't fill their request)
EVERY SINGLE CAKE SHOP IN THE UNIVERSE MUST BE FORCED BY THE GOVERNMENT TO BAKE THE SPECIFIC CUSTOMIZED CAKE I WANT

[Brett Bellmore]

They've committed to it in principle, anyway. Practice seems to be quite another thing.

[MatthewSlyfield]

There's also the fact that it being the UK they had to modify "freedom of expression" with the term "lawful".

[Eugene Volokh]

I expect all countries that protect freedom of expression allow some restrictions on it (threats, libel, fraudulent charitable solicitation, false advertising, etc.); certainly the U.S. does. "Lawful freedom of expression" seems like a reasonable way to capture that reality, whether under English law, American law, or otherwise.

[Lee Moore]

1. There’s more to the UK than England.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56364821

https://reclaimthenet.org/scotlands-anti-free-speech-law-has-passed

2. And there’s the question of :

The bill’s broad and ambiguous definitions state that “intent” must be established to stir up hatred against protected groups, and it must pass “a reasonable person’s test before an offense has been committed.”

Broad and ambiguous definitions are at the heart of this, and in the UK account for all sorts of police visits to twitterers, and children being taken from parents by the child services mob. If the case makes the newspapers, then there’s usually an apology and they back down. (Not unlike this case about Nigel Farage, though I don’t know whether he’s got his bank account back. But it’s delightful that the bank CEO in question got fired for leaking his financial affairs to the BBC – though she’ll fall into a cosy sinecure soon enough. It should be noted that the bank’s Board initially decided NOT to fire her, which shows their real commitment. They only got round to it when they got a call from the government – which owns 40% of the bank.)

If the banks were serious – they’re not – they’d make it clear that the test of “lawful freedom of expression” is whether the guy has been convicted of an offense. Otherwise it’ll just be decided by the bank’s own DEI folk based on a general memo from the legal department written in vague terms. And if there’s a “mistake” it’ll be oh dear, sorry.

So if the government was serious – it’s not – they’d put this into law. With banking licences at stake and so on.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, sure, but it has to be noted that once you modify "freedom of expression" with "lawful", censorship becomes tautologically not a violation of that freedom. ANY form of censorship, enacted into law, trivially does not infringe "lawful" freedom of expression.

Now, in a country like the US, where freedom of speech is actually in the Constitution, statutes that violate it can themselves be unlawful, and the situation is somewhat different. But in a country like the UK, which lacks that sort of constitution, there you are: Censorship, tautologically, is never a violation of lawful freedom of expression.

So that guaranteeing lawful freedom of expression, where there is no actual limit on what can be outlawed, is rather hollow.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Some people don’t want to have professors criticize lieutenant governors; to permit blog commenters to use mean words (such as “sl_ck-j_w”) to describe conservatives; to bake cakes; to have teachers tell students the truth about gays or racism; to fill certain prescriptions for customers; to design websites for certain customers; to hire teachers, basketball coaches, or janitors who are gay; or to purchase Bud Light.

Other people don’t want to provide business services to bigoted right-wing assholes.

If you’re looking for consistency from the clingers on this front, you will be disappointed.

[Ed Grinberg]

I am all for re-establishing the right of business owners to refuse "to provide business services" to whoever they like (or, rather, dislike).
But you are also lumping in some examples that involve public schools; I'm guessing you're just trying to muddy the waters.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

It seems like this exposes an issue with "at-will" contractual arrangements in the following way:

Farage feels he was discriminated against on the basis of his political views. That seems like a reasonable claim. On the other hand, the banks have a coherent rationale that does not involve his political views (or rather, is "viewpoint-neutral") for closing the account. Farage would likely suggest this rationale is pretextual. It is unlikely that there would be a smoking gun to prove that it is pretextual. As a result, if Farage was discriminated against, he would have a hard time proving it, and any system designed to require proof to give him justice would fail him.

The way this can be solved is to reverse the presumption (e.g. that the burden falls on the bank to prove their stated rationale was not pretextual because Farage has a facially reasonable claim of being discriminated against). But doing this seems like a bad idea for these kinds of arrangements in general. In the U.S. at-will employment takes this kind of shape; you can fire anyone for any reason unless you do it for an illegal reason, many people who feel they were fired illegally would contest the reason as being pretextual, and placing the burden on the employer rather than the plaintiff seems disastrous.

So I'm also curious as to why the government, in choosing to try to "voluntarily" secure these commitments from banks, isn't addressing the problem more holistically.

[Lakanal 2]

The Left-leaning Independent does not give you the full story. The bank cobbled together a 40 page dossier about his “values”, while accepting that from a commercial perspective his was a viable account. Then the NatWest Group CEO leaked to the BBC a false story that Farage - who is one of the UK’s most prominent political broadcasters - was being dropped because he did not have enough money. This trampling of client confidentiality and the GPDR has claimed the heads of the NatWest and Coutts Bank CEOs.

[ThePublius]

There's more to this story. Farage has come into possession of documents explaining the real reason for his accounts being closed, contradicting what the bank had said.