Disruptive PBIA airline passengers get lesson in the limits of 'free speech' | Frank Cerabino

A viral TikTok video over the weekend shows a couple being escorted off a JetBlue flight before takeoff from Palm Beach International Airport.

It’s not clear what set off this middle-age man and woman during the boarding of the airliner, but the three-minute video shows their reluctant departure while the man blames the people around him, which he describes by a homophobic slur.

Crime and punctuation: Words of caution about sentencing people to write sentences | Frank Cerabino

Sunshine state dystopia: The 'banning' of school library books in Florida a symptom of life in 'DeSantistan' | Frank Cerabino

Why isn't this called 'grooming?' DeSantis using Black kids as Critical Race Theory props is political child abuse | Frank Cerabino

Meanwhile, his wife stalls their departure enough to deliver a speech to the rest of the passengers about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“Do you guys see what’s happening in America?” she asks. “You didn’t like what he said, and now we’re getting kicked off a plane …

“You guys, we’re going to turn into China. It’s coming. Sheep. Sheep. Sheep. Bahhhhhh. Really.

“The president or the master people didn’t like what I said.”

For the record, President Joe Biden was not on the flight, or informed to weigh in on whether this couple should be ejected from the commercial airliner. As for the “master people,” I don’t know who the woman was referring to, although she did eventually offered a little more clarity to her views.

“We've got to get off the plane because we’re Trump supporters,” she said. “Serious, I really think that’s what it is.”

This elicited audible groans from the passengers and one of them saying, “Don’t do that.”

Booted airline passenger hails Elon Musk

The agitated husband and wife were eventually persuaded to leave the plane, but not before the woman imagined that a new savior was going to make sure this wouldn’t happen in the future.

“Elon Musk, he’s the best,” she shouted. “Elon! He’s the f****** king!”

There’s a lot to unpack here. And as somebody who has more than a passing interest in free speech, I think it’s worth addressing a common misconception that this couple and probably millions of other Americans have.

There has been no word that has been purposefully abused more than “freedom” during the past few years. It's to the point where some people imagine they have the freedom to do all sorts of things, whether it’s spewing a virus on other people, or holding up the departure of a commercial airliner.

It’s true that the First Amendment protects a lot of obnoxious, jerky behavior and speech. But it doesn’t protect all obnoxious, jerky behavior and speech.

This is especially true on airlines, where the risks of boarding “disruptive” passengers, and not free speech, is what matters.

Airline passenger safety not up for discussion

On JetBlue’s “Contract of Carriage,” the agreement all passengers consent to with the purchase of their tickets, there are 15 different categories of passengers who can be denied boarding for the “comfort and safety” of other passengers.

It includes passengers who are barefoot, those who have an “offensive odor,” and others who are manacled, drunk or pregnant within a week of their due date.

The airlines can kick you off a plane, even if you don’t say a word, but are wearing an item of clothing considered “lewd, obscene, or patently offensive.”

The category of exclusion in the West Palm Beach case was the one allowing the airline to deny boarding to passengers “whose conduct is or has been known to be disorderly, abusive, offensive, threatening, intimidating, or violent.”

Translation: If you get on a flight and start acting so obnoxious that other passengers start to complain about you, the flight crew's going to kick you off the plane as a safety precaution.

Keeping the cabin free of escalating passenger arguments and potential physical confrontations outweighs any imaginary rights you might have to sermonize that your fellow travelers are sheep.

So much of these specious free speech claims are based in a well-fertilized misunderstanding of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment protects free speech when it comes to criticizing the government or having access to speak at a government setting. It doesn’t mean that everybody else has to put up with you in all places and times.

Private businesses have a right to exclude service to anybody, as long as the exclusion isn’t based on the person being a member of a class of people who are protected by law from discrimination.

The law protects a denial of public accommodation based on sex, racial and ethnic minorities, age and those with disabilities. And in enlightened areas of the country, that protection against discrimination extends to sexual orientation and gender identity.

But loudmouths aren’t on the list. So if that couple stood up and made a nuisance of themselves at, say, a restaurant instead of an airliner, they could be shown the door there, too, and it wouldn’t have anything to do with constitutionally protected free speech.

Private businesses get to decide who they serve and don’t serve. If they want, they could deny service to people in shorts pants and Crocs, or people who have a history of eating too much at the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Or people who are Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as happened in a Virginia restaurant. Freedom, it turns out, is a double-edged sword.

Private business not a forum for free speech

The idea that free speech is absolute is just plain wrong, and evoking Elon Musk’s name is further evidence of that delusion.

The quirky billionaire has thrilled people on the political right since he announced an intention to buy Twitter, a social-media service that has pointedly banned posters, including former President Donald Trump.

Musk has said he intended to open up Twitter by restoring the accounts of those who have been banned for violating the terms of service previously established by the private company.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joined those cheerleading for Musk to do that.

“Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter is a good deal for shareholders and raises the prospect that the platform will be a place where free speech can thrive, not a tool for narrative enforcement,” DeSantis tweeted.

DeSantis should know better. “Free speech” is an issue that is centered around the government crimping the rights of people to speak freely.

Twitter is not the government. Twitter is a private company, one that gets to establish its own terms of service, just like a restaurant or JetBlue.

Trump was booted from Twitter because the private company determined that his Tweets following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol violated the social-media company’s “glorification of violence” policy.

“You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people. We also prohibit the glorification of violence,” the Twitter policy said.

“Violations of this policy include, but are not limited to, glorifying, praising, condoning or celebrating violent acts committed by civilians that resulted in death or serious physical injury,” it reads, in part.

You can disagree with this policy. And now that Musk has become the sole owner of Twitter, his $44 billion investment allows him to change the private company’s “glorification of violence” policy.

Musk can allow beheading videos on Twitter if he chooses.

But to say that Twitter practices “viewpoint discrimination” because it has a policy against users inciting riots is nothing more than whipping up a fraudulent First Amendment argument where none exists.

The disruptive couple on the JetBlue got kicked off, in part, because they imagined rights that don’t exist – and imagined that Musk can somehow empower them to exercise those nonexistent rights in the future. And there’s no shortage of people in power who are eager to foster those illusions.

As for Musk being a champion of free speech, don't count on it.

When a University of Central Florida student started a Twitter account in 2020 that tracked the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet through the use of public information, the site drew more than 432,000 followers. But Musk thought this public information was too dangerous to be disseminated. He tried to get the college student to shut down the site as a security risk to him and his family.

So much for free speech.

fcerabino@gannett.com

@FranklyFlorida

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: 'Free speech' sermon on JetBlue a 'disruptive' passenger ejection