The topic of whether a private business has the lawful right to deny service to federal law enforcement officers has become a hot conversation in the United States following a rash of incidents in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Homeland Security leadership have been refused service at corporate gas stations and hotel chains.
The incidents responsible for opening up the conversation involved ICE agents who were not allowed to book rooms at a hotel and the commander for Border Patrol being denied service at a gas station. Folks have been debating whether the refusals fall under lawful private discretion or illegal discrimination against federal law enforcement carrying out official duties.
Video footage captured by conservative activist and social media influencer Cam Higby showed U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino being followed out of the store by a man who said he was the manager of the business. Bovino kept quiet on the situation when asked by Higby outside the Speedway about what happened. However, Deputy Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said similar incidents have happened at several gas stations where anti-ICE agitators stalked officers.
According to a report from Fox News, when Higby asked the manager why he refused to serve Bovino, he said, “Because I wanted to. I don’t support ICE and nobody here does.” The man refused to answer when asked if he thought it was legal to deny service to federal agents based on their law enforcement role. In the background, an employee can be heard saying, “If it is illegal, I personally don’t care.”
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for North Florida Zack Smith spoke with Fox News and stated that the Speedway manager’s behavior was wrong. “It’s shameful conduct to try to penalize men and women who are going out, day in and day out, seeking to enforce federal… law, seeking to penalize them and refusing to provide them services,” Smith, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government, said.
“We’ve seen this in the past, particularly when a lot of emotions were high in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, in other places where individuals were refusing service to law enforcement,” he added. Smith said that while businesses may retain the legal right to deny Bovino and other law enforcement professionals service, that doesn’t make it right.
“I think that’s shameful conduct and, at the end of the day, it ultimately has harmed many of those businesses. Now, in terms of whether businesses have the right to turn away law enforcement officers, just because they may have the right to do it doesn’t make it the right thing morally to do,” Smith continued.
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Smith then explained the best way to respond to situations like the one ICE agents are encountering is not legal action, but to exercise boycott power, which every American possesses. Not long after the footage of the Speedway incident went viral on social media, critics said they weren’t going to shop at the convenience store chain.
Conservatives also expressed anger at Speedway and its parent company, 7-Eleven, for not publicly addressing what happened in a prominent way, unlike Hilton, which released statements about the hotel that refused to book ICE agents. “I suspect part of that is the reason, you mentioned earlier, that Hilton was revoking the franchise of some hotels that refuse to honor reservations for federal law enforcement [is] they understand that many consumers are not going to approve or like it when businesses are refusing service to individuals simply because they are members of law enforcement,” Smith concluded.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video