Neighborhood Freedom Amendment
A proposed constitutional amendment for our diverse democracy
America has transformed a great deal in the past century, and is more diverse than ever. Unfortunately, our laws and court decisions have not kept pace with the rapidly shifting patchwork of communities and identities. Our approach to the careful balance of civil rights, civil liberties, and the pursuit of happiness requires an adaptive approach designed for the 21st rather than the 19th and 20th centuries.
From Plymouth Rock through to the present, a bedrock promise of America has been religious freedom, offering a refuge to those whose communities are persecuted in their nations of origin. Another bedrock promise of America has been equal treatment under the law and equal access to the great society we’re striving to build. There is no singular “American Dream,” but rather a dream for dreamers, of a country where every dream may be pursued, so long as it doesn’t tread upon the dreams of others.
Regretfully, the Civil Rights Act and related and subsequent regulations and rulings designed with the noble task of ending forced racial segregation require a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of communities to define and defend themselves. This seemingly intractable conflict of interest between liberty and equality finds an elegant synthesis in the Neighborhood Freedom Amendment, permitting religious and social groups to peacefully and respectfully build their lives together without interfering in the lives of others.
Neighborhood Freedom Amendment
The rights of citizens to establish new residential housing developments with restrictive covenants shall not be infringed. If it can be shown that the residential housing development is an entirely new development of previously undeveloped or non-residential land that is not replacing existing residential real estate, then the new subdivision may require and enforce restrictive covenants on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or civic association. Restrictive covenants, once established, may never be further restricted.
The NFA is the visionary next step in America’s struggle to make good on its promise of civil rights for all of its diverse citizenry, and it is necessary to steer away from the path of escalating political conflict that can only escalate if steps aren’t taken to permit socioculturally incompatible groups to peacefully and respectfully define and defend distinct private, residential spaces. It truly is possible for Americans of every race and religion to get along, but only if we revise the process so that they’re not systematically forced into direct, daily, and destructive competition and conflict.
A comprehensive respect for diversity lies in not only affording rights to individuals, but to the communities in which American individuals are seamlessly integrated. Islamic American communities should be permitted where residents agree to arbitrate their disputes in their traditional sharia law, Orthodox Jewish communities in their halakha law, Amish communities according to their customs, and so on. The NFA delivers equal rights under the law while avoiding the “one size fits all” problem of trying to define one universal set of community standards for a country composed of hundreds of very distinct communities with distinct values and traditions.
A constitutional amendment is required, as there is simply too much precedent behind the 19th and 20th century civil rights frameworks to achieve the necessary repair by any other means. Fair Housing laws which were designed to resolve different problems in a different century have the unintended consequence of making it so that it’s currently illegal for any community to achieve de jure identities. There remain communities with varying degrees of de facto identity, but all of these are locked into the current legal framework that structurally guarantees their assimilation and alienation from what makes them distinct and unique. This was never the intention of the civil rights pioneers, and the onus is on us to ensure that it does not become the effect.
While the NFA will assuredly receive a chilly reception at first, momentum will build as its necessity becomes more obvious for more and more American citizens and politicians. This country is being ripped apart by our racial, religious, and civic differences, and it doesn’t have to be this way. This great country has enough challenges to face in the coming millennium without arbitrarily and unnecessarily besetting itself with easily and equitably avoidable civil strife that will only grow worse until we learn to afford one another a little space.