Reflections on Deliberative Freedom, Subordination, and Prohibited Grounds in Faces of Inequality

Abstract

In her excellent book Faces of Inequality, Sophia Moreau, develops a compelling theory of discrimination aimed at answering the central question, “When we disadvantage some people relative to others on the basis of certain traits, when and why do we wrong them by failing to treat them as the equals to others?”1 Moreau assumes that any adequate theory of discrimination must not only make sense of the actual contours of anti-discrimination law but must also capture the central complaints of discriminatees. A central complaint of discriminatees is that they are burdened with having to always think about their race, or gender, or disability, or other socially salient trait. Moreau construes this complaint as a complaint that a right to deliberative freedom has been violated. “Deliberative freedom is the freedom to deliberate about one’s life, and to decide what to do in light of those deliberations, without having to treat certain personal traits (or other people’s assumptions about them) as costs, and without having to live one’s life with these traits always before one’s eyes.”2 Given that targets of discrimination complain about loss of this kind of deliberative freedom, an adequate theory of wrongful discrimination must have something to say about the connection between discrimination and deliberative freedom.