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The main argument against repealing the Civil Rights Act is that if people have the option to discriminate against racial minorities in jobs, housing, and school admissions, they will do so. In order to know if this is true, we would need to look at a country that has a similar racial mix to America, but no anti-discrimination laws, then compare the life outcomes of Africans or other historically oppressed groups in America to their life outcomes in that country.
Can anyone think of such a country to use as a test case?
I recently found out that France does not have anti-discrimination laws, but also that they don't collect data on race, so it might not be possible to use them as a comparison.
What is the main argument in favor of repealing the Civil Rights Act?
I can guarantee you the general population has absolutely zero interest in this fact. Maybe it would help you win some arguments on the internet. That's likely why this isn't a priority for Libertarian think tanks, and if it is, is probably symptomatic of their general ineffectiveness.
Hanania doesn't argue for an outright repeal (he thinks it's better politically to only repeal some portions and some executive orders and have SCOTUS fix some bad interpretations), but his book's quite good, and not very long. A shorter version of the same thesis can be found here.
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While it had a defensible original merit, it's since mutated into everything from a civility code to a dress code to floor wax and dessert topping, near-universally favoring a single perspective happens to dominate the regulatory offices enforcing it and the business administrative groups 'advising' responses to it. These ad-hoc modifications have turned the law into a direct threat to even after-hours and out-of-office speech not directed to coworkers or employees, as well as enforcing norms that aren't shared (or even clearly known) for a wide majority of the American populace, and providing a level of administrative overhead that restricts a large variety of classical parts of community-forming that it 'officially' isn't even supposed to touch.
At the same time, the EEOC and courts have little interest or even ability to find truth or act within the law's clear bounds, such that bringing even meritful CRA actions against clear abusers risks blacklisting one's own future career for little compensation. To avoid or at least reduce unintended friendly fire, they've had to smoother the not-quite-rules with further unofficial patches and unstated expectations of behavior, which further make them incomprehensible and unusable for the very people they are most heavily meant to support.
I'm not convinced that this requires repeal, or even that it's better than the best-alternative-to-negotiated-agreement, but there's a reason that the HR admin to corporate jobs is the equivalent of the Karen in the service sector.
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The reason to repeal it is that the use of "disparate impact" and "hostile work environment" in discrimination investigations have been disastrous for society, as Richard Hanania's book argues. Repealing the CRA would be the quickest way to fix the problem, and it'll be the only way if the Supreme Court reaffirms disparate impact.
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