Luckily industry black listing was a major issue we already dealt within the late 1800's when it was common practice for local factories to share a black list of "trouble causing" employees so they literally could not work anywhere in town if they caused problems for a single companies, because that could potentially hurt anyone's bottom line. </sarcasm>
I love how an industry that claims to be so enlightened and educated barely cracks a history book when money gets involved.
Don't forget the Red Scare, where if a person was publicly even just accused of being a Communist they would be shunned in every facet of their life. America is still dealing with the aftershocks of that one.
I think most US residents on HN live in a state where blacklisting is illegal. Washington state and New York have labour laws against blacklisting while California has a law against employers preventing previous employees from finding work. I wouldn't be surprised if most states had laws like New York, Washington or California.
Black listing laws are handled at the state level not nationally which makes simply googling them a bit difficult as every state's legal code isn't uploaded and searchable (yet).
I love how an industry that claims to be so enlightened and educated barely cracks a history book when money gets involved.