Just curious what people here think. In my state there is a proposal for a bill to make it illegal for businesses to ban their employees from leaving guns in their cars if they are parked on the business's private property.
As others have noted, Utah passed a
"Parking Lot Preemption" law that prevents most employers from taking any negative employment action against an employee who keeps either religious material or a legally possessed firearm in their vehicle, while parked in a company parking lot. The gun must not be in plain view from outside the vehicle, and must be locked in some way (locked doors count according to my reading, a lock box attached to a motorcycle also works). The employer is provided protection from liability for the firearms stored in vehicles.
There are a few exceptions to the law including religious organizations acting as employers and employers subject to federal requirements regarding the security of their parking lots. While State & local government entities including public schools are exempt from this section of law, under
our State Preemption of firearm laws, most government entities are subject to more strict laws that allow employees to carry into the actual workplace. On the flip side, the State Preemption law doesn't contain the remedies for violation provided to private sector employees.
Under our Parking Lot Preemption law, most employees have civil cause of action should they face negative employment consequences as a result of a prohibited ban on keeping either firearms or religious material in their cars in the company parking lot. The State Attorney General can also bring action against an employer who maintains or enforces a policy banning guns or religious material.
Would you support this legislation?
Would you be concerned it would violate the property rights of the owners?
As they say about devils and details....but yes, such laws provide protection to the fundamental right to defend life. Let us remember, despite our short hand nomenclature about "gun rights", guns do not have rights. People have rights including the right to defend life and limb. An employer ban on guns inside private cars parked in company parking lots have the effect of infringing in self-defense rights well beyond the workplace as employees are disarmed from the time they leave home until the time they return home.
In a perfectly libertarian society I'd not suggest parking lot preemption.
But in our current world where we have a host of laws that limit employer property (and other rights) in the name of protecting employees in various ways, I'm not worried about loss of property rights for employers. Especially not when I weigh the impact to the employer against the impact to the employee.
For the employee, we are talking about infringing his ability to defend his life and limb.
What is the infringement on the employer? An inanimate object, that poses no risk to the employer's safety, inside an employee's car that in 99.999...% of cases the employer will never even know is present.
Short of the libertarian notion of going and getting another job where the boss doesn't have a problem with guns (or your race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, etc) there is simply no comparison between the relative levels of infringement.
So in the real world where we live, where society has determined that most employers are subject to anti-discrimination laws that prevent them taking action because of an employee's religion, race, political or religious affiliation, sexual orientation/identity, national origin, veteran status, or handicap that can be reasonably accommodated, I'm not going to be concerned about a corporate person's property rights when weighed against a natural person's right to effectively defend his life.
In fact, if I had the votes to do it, I ban employers from enforcing a no gun policy in the workplace in most cases. I would tolerate a "dress code" that required guns to be concealed rather than carried openly. But I think disarming employees in workplaces without real and meaningful security is tantamount to chaining fire escape doors closed or deliberately violating building standards.
But since I don't have the votes to do that, parking lot preemption was a workable compromise that preserves employers' ability to set policy in the workplace itself without letting them reach into the private property of the employee nor presume to disarm them for the entire commute. Sadly, it does nothing for those who use mass transit and so don't have a personal, rolling storage locker available.
Charles