In 1997, two then-high school athletes, Aaron and Evan Steed founded Meathead Movers. The company has grown into California's largest independent moving company based on the what the company describes as "the brothers' vision of energetic athletes delivering a unique customer service experience."

They hire young, strong athletes to help move heavy furniture and other objects. If I were in need of a moving company, I would be concerned for the safety of a company that hired older, more injury-susceptible employees. I would also be concerned about the cost of moving furniture with smaller, weaker, older people. Some people might not have those concerns and should be able to pay more for moving.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed suit against the San Luis Obispo moving company Meathead Movers, Inc. Although they could not find a single employee to complain about the company’s hiring policies, they slapped the company with a demand for $15 million and changes in its internal practices to settle the EEOC's age-discrimination claims.

"We of course said, 'sorry, we can't afford that' and I'm never going to agree to go out of business," Meathead Movers CEO Aaron Steed objects in a video posted to Facebook. "From there, we had three mediations, all of which failed. I agreed to all the non-monetary demands: changing our training, changing the wording in our slogan, all kinds of things. And still, they wanted an eight-figure settlement which would have bankrupted my company."

The EEOC didn't like Steed going public, so it told the company to shut up. Meathead Movers wouldn't be allowed to share its ordeal or its side of the story with the public.

"The EEOC issued a gag order demanding that Aaron and his company cease all public communication—including social media posts—about the case, under threat of additional legal action," according to the Goldwater Institute, which is now involved in the case. "In other words, the government is now trampling on the First Amendment rights of the company's founder, simply because it doesn't like that the company is sharing the truth about the government's actions in this case."

This is just another example of how our federal government has grown so big and out of control that it needs to be reduced in both size and scope. The founders never intended government to suppress the rights of business owners. The Constitution guarantees the rights of business owners, employees, and customers to determine the value of goods and services by their freedom to make choices, as free as possible from the abusive power of government.