• The Polish parliament adopted a draft amendment of the Criminal Code which penalises the alleged hatred speech.
• The adoption of the task may lead to a crucial simplification in freedom of expression and to the bias of arbitrarily elected social groups.
• The Ordo Iuris Institute has opposed the bill from the outset, publishing analyses and sending the government an opinion indicating the request to reject the project.
• Now the Institute will appeal to the president to veto the bill.
Ordo Iuris indicatesthat the task threatens the freedom of expression guaranteed in Article 54(1) of the Polish Constitution. In addition, the extension of the catalogue of "protected features" to "sexual orientation" and sex ("sex identity") can lead, as the experience of Western countries shows, to the increasing prohibitions of opposing LGBT demands and imposing their views on sexuality over time.
As the Institute emphasises, the choice of specified features is protected arbitrary, unjustified and omits a full scope of characteristics that could besides be the origin of adverse (‘hateful’) treatment. The ultimate Court already in 2014. He stressed that "the addition of respective crucial grounds of discrimination in the proposed government does not exhaust all the possible discriminatory factors, but as crucial as Mental illness, AIDS, addiction to alcohol or drugs, obesity, homelessness’.
In Ordo Iuris's assessment, the real nonsubjective of the task is to extend the ‘protected’ catalogue to ‘sexual orientation’ and sex understood as ‘sexual identity’. The combination of them with “age” and “disability” aims to hide the ideological character of the task under affirmative associations related to the protection of aged and disabled people.
Also critical of the bill was the leading American think-tank of law Alliance defence Freedom. The organisation pointed out that the peculiar importance of freedom of expression was repeatedly stressed by the European Court of Human Rights. In ADF's assessment, the task does not meet the conditions that would limit its comments.
== sync, corrected by elderman ==
