guilt by association

1. The attribution of guilt to individuals because of the people or organizations with which they associate, rather than because of any crime that they have committed.

Example Sentences

There are good reasons of privacy and unfair guilt by association not to dump hundreds of thousands of pages of raw FBI investigatory files into the public arena.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Morris, who is Black, called claims of racism preposterous and said it was a campaign of guilt by association.

Read more on Salon

“His critics continue to engage in guilt by association for comments that were not his,” De León’s attorney said in a lawsuit targeting two people whom De León suspected of making the recording.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

This allowed the researchers to group genes into common clusters that revealed the role of each gene through "guilt by association."

Read more on Science Daily

Osborne’s lawyers accused prosecutors of engaging in “guilt by association” to argue that he, like the Pollocks and Hutchinson, is a flight risk.

Read more on Seattle Times