The head of the Arab Joint List political alliance, Ayman Odeh, said the law sought to "intimidate and wipe away the few organisations that act and fight in the public sphere for equality to the Arab public".
Public sphere substantive equality of opportunity obtains if and only if formal public sphere equal opportunity obtains and in addition all members of society have some substantial opportunity to develop traits that would render them qualified for any public sphere positions they might seek.
Public sphere formal equality of opportunity obtains in a society if and only if all public sphere institutions and practices and associations are open to all members of society, with selection for especially favorable treatment or appointment to any position in any sphere being made on a meritocratic basis.
Public sphere fair equality of opportunity (FEO) obtains if and only if any two individuals with the same native talent potential for becoming qualified for any type of public sphere position and the same ambition to become qualified have identical prospects of success in the competition for such positions.
A perhaps controversial case of a type of decision that might be thought to lie in the public or in the private sphere with respect to the application of equality of opportunity would be decisions of business-oriented social clubs that are traditionally exclusively male or white in their membership to continue to deny membership to nonwhites and nonmales who might seek admission.
As President Barack Obama said "[w]omen's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace".
The ideal of equality in the public sphere is another underlying theme in the current debate.
It revived old stereotypes, divided the women's movement, drove apart mothers and daughters, and set back the cause of equality in the political sphere by decades".
Some also pleas for institutional insulation of the political and some social spheres so as to protect these as realms of equality from the corrosive influence of economic inequality (Walzer 1983 and Rawls 2005, Lecture VIII).
The equality required in the economic sphere is complex, taking account of several positions that — each according to the presumption of equality — justify a turn away from equality.
