Post-Mortem on a Strange Law

Representative Terry Goodin (D-Crothersville) authored a bill—that ended up passing the Democrat controlled House, the Republican controlled Senate, and was signed into law by the Republican Governor. This law required that stores that planned to sell sexually explicit materials to pay a $250 fee and register with the Secretary of State saying what types of materials that they planned on selling. The expressed reason for this law was to help localities with zoning issues.

Well, this law died an ignominious death by being declared unconstitutional (regarding the first amendment) by U.S. District Court Justice Barker.

The post-mortem after the jump.

This was bad law. It had little or no legitimate government concern at its center. It was poorly written. It was trying to achieve a result (let localities control where pornography was available via zoning) by a very indirect approach. It tried to make a zoning issue a criminal issue. And probably a lot more. (I am not convinced that the First Amendment was one of those issues…)

So why did our legislature let us down by 1) passing this crap or at least 2) vetting it to the point of getting it written correctly. This is not a partisan issue. This was a Democrat written bill, passed by both Democrats and Republicans. So why did our Governor let us down by not reviewing the law and saying, “This law smells awful” and veto the thing?

In short, why did this end up having to get into our judicial system in order to get “fixed”?

I hate the judiciary getting involved in legislation. It leads to the ideas that if you don’t like a law, just litigate against it. This is the central premise of the television show Boston Legal. It encourages the judiciary to be activist. But what it also appears to be doing is encouraging the legislative and executive branches to abdicate their responsibilities. They seem to be throwing junk laws against the wall and let the judiciary clean it up.

At my most cynical times, I think they do this so that they can claim that they are supportive of [fill in the political election theme here] while not actually doing anything about it. At my least cynical times, I think our governing bodies are weak-kneed and lazy.

You can read the ruling at the Indiana Law Blog. Note: I disagree with several of the findings in this ruling.