Techdirt. Stories filed under "louisiana"

Judge Rules Woman Is Allowed To Flip Off Neighbors With Xmas Lights For Now

Timothy Geigner — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 11:24:00 PST

As I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before, I am exceptionally comfortable with profanity, and believe it's a form of free speech that should be protected. The right to say words does not end because of the interpretation of those words by someone else. That's why I cheered on Tim Cushing's piece on an SVSU student who used a vulgar poster to give his school just enough rope to hang itself from the irony rafters. There are certain situations that require use of vulgar words or gestures as a release, or even as the proper descriptive expression. For instance, let's say your neighbors are acting like enormous anuses while you're setting up your Christmas lights; what's the proper way to tell them what you think of them?

Well, if you answered "craft my Christmas lights into a giant middle finger pointed at my neighbors house", then give yourself a pat on the back because a court recently ruled that doing so didn't violate any laws and is protected free speech.

A district court judge rule this week that a Louisiana woman could hang her Christmas lights in the shape of a middle finger, as a nasty holiday “greeting” to her neighbors. Police initially threatened to arrest Sarah Childs for her illuminated display, but with the help of the ACLU, Child won her suit against the city.

That Mediaite summary is slightly exaggerated, because she didn't quite "win" the lawsuit yet. The judge just granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting police from stopping the display, with a full hearing to take place in the New Year. However, the judge does say it's likely that she's going to win:

The Court finds that Defendants' continued efforts to prevent Plaintiff from displaying her holiday lights will result in an infringement of Plaintiff's rights of free speech and due process, and that the Plaintiff has demonstrated a likelihood of succeeding in her argument that this infringement is impermissable under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

Yes, this woman, who is my new personal hero, actually took this case to court because she really wanted to flip off her neighbors in the most festive manner possible. The story goes mostly as you'd expect. Childs put the lights up, was threatened with arrest, took them down...and then decided that arrest was worth it so she put up the giant glowing "bird" once more. The police showed up again, this time threatening to arrest Childs for violating the Denham Springs obscentity statute, which is a pretty ballsy threat considering the city doesn't even have an obscentity statute. That's where this gets really fun.

After she contacted the local ACLU for help with a lawsuit, the city officers issued her two unrelated tickets that attorneys call a “collateral attack”: one for obstructing the flow of traffic as she was walking down the street and another for disturbing the peace while singing a song about her fight with neighbors in her driveway.

An entire song about her fight with her neighbors, and she decided to sing it to them? My lord, if I were single I'd hunt this wonderful woman down so that we could spend a lovely weekend together cursing at nuns or something. In any case, the court ruled in her favor on free speech and due process violations, pending a full hearing in January, well after the holiday season.

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Louisiana Makes It Illegal To Use Cash For Secondhand Sales

Mike Masnick — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:19:09 PDT

One of the good features of cash is the fact that it can be used anonymously. It's no surprise that the government hates that, but would you ever expect the government to actually outlaw the use of cash? Down in Louisiana, a recently passed law completely outlaws the use of cash in transactions for secondhand goods. When I read the story, I thought it was so crazy that it had to be a misunderstanding. I looked up the bill, and the original version of the bill actually does not have this clause. Instead, it requires that anyone selling secondhand goods make a detailed recording of any cash transaction. But somewhere along the way, that bill was amended, and the final version (embedded below) does, in fact, appear to ban cash transactions:

A secondhand dealer shall not enter into any cash transactions in payment for the purchase of junk or used or secondhand property. Payment shall be made in the form of check, electronic transfers, or money order issued to the seller of the junk or used or secondhand property and made payable to the name and address of the seller. All payments made by check, electronic transfers, or money order shall be reported separately in the daily reports required by R.S. 37:1866.

I do wonder if that's even legal. Our cash clearly says that "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." While businesses may have the right to refuse cash, can a government outlaw the use of cash? That seems pretty extreme.

The state representative behind the bill, Rickey Hardy, seems to think it's no big deal, admitting that this is purely to make life easier for law enforcement in response to criminals who steal stuff and then sell it off:

"It's a mechanism to be used so the police department has something to go on and have a lead," explains Hardy.

You can understand why law enforcement wants that, but just because law enforcement wants details of your private transactions, it doesn't mean you should be blocked from using cash. And people wonder why there was so much interest in Bitcoin (even if Bitcoin itself is rather flawed).

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Funeral Directors Want To Put Monks In Jail For Offering 'Unauthorized' Coffins

Mike Masnick — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:28:43 PDT

Ah, regulatory capture. Down in Louisiana, there's a law that makes it a crime (yes, a crime) for anyone other than a funeral parlor to sell "funeral merchandise." This rule is enforced by the state's "funeral regulatory board," which (you guessed it) is mostly dominated by funeral parlor industry insiders. Now, a few years back, you may remember, there was a big Hurricane called Katrina. Among the massive damage done to the state of Louisiana, it also knocked down much of a large forest of pine trees on the property of the Benedictine monks at St. Joseph Abbey. With so many downed pine trees, the monks, in a lemons-into-lemonade type of moment, decided to use the downed trees to make hand-crafted caskets.

The funeral parlor directors were not amused, at this "unauthorized" competition -- and warned the monks that violating the laws against such unauthorized funeral merchandise could land you in jail for up to 180 days. Yes, the funeral directors were threatening a bunch of monks who were hand-crafting coffins out of pine trees knocked down by Hurricane Katrina with jailtime. After the threat, the monks continued to make caskets, but tried to keep the activity quiet -- and the funeral regulatory board literally sent out investigators to go spy on them to see if they were still selling caskets. After collecting evidence, they hit the monks with a subpoena, and are attempting to fine the monks for selling such caskets. In response, the monks are filing a federal lawsuit, claiming that they were being shut out of the market by a "casket cartel."

It's difficult not to see this as a clear case of regulatory capture. The Louisiana funeral regulatory board has nine members, eight of whom are in the funeral industry. There are even some funeral directors who are willing to admit that the whole thing looks bad, with one telling the Wall Street Journal that "They're making us all look greedy." As for the defense of the law? Well, the funeral directors who support such a restriction on free trade are really reaching:

Boyd Mothe Jr., a member of the fifth generation of his family to run Mothe Funeral Homes outside New Orleans, says Louisiana's law should remain on the books because licensed directors have the training to sell caskets--transactions he calls "complicated." For instance, he says, "a quarter of America is oversized. I don't even know if the monks know how to make an oversized casket."

Very convincing, huh?

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Don't Be A Jerk To A Minor In Louisiana Or Say Anything Sexually Suggestive In Scotland

Mike Masnick — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:43:27 PDT

Back in May we wrote about how Louisiana was the latest state to try to pass overly broad anti-"cyberbullying" legislation, that would make it illegal to say anything online that might "embarrass" anyone under 17. With a few modifications that law has now been passed. They (thankfully) removed the "embarrass or cause emotional distress" part, but still left in that it's illegal to communicate "with intent to torment or intimidate" which seems pretty broad. No more trash talking on IM, kids.

Meanwhile, Glyn Moody points us to a new law in Scotland that outlaws "indecent communication" online. The law says you can't say anything sexually related to someone without first getting consent. While, the intentions are good, the reality is that this will almost certainly lead to problems:

In our culture, it is not normal to ask people for permission to say something sexual during the course of a facebook chat or a conversation in a bar. "Do you mind if I deploy an innuendo" just wouldn't sound right. And quite frankly it shouldn't.

Whether people get off with each other in bars, or engage in mundane msn conversations that degenerate into bad internet sex, people frequently make the transition from polite conversation into something more erotic. And this very often necessitates somebody saying something on a whim, somebody communicating some sexual feeling in the hope that it will be reciprocated. And sometimes that means saying something under circumstances that don't quite match up to a "reasonable belief in consent".

The more and more governments try to regulate how people talk to each other online, the more and more ridiculous it's going to look.

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Using An Online Map As Part Of Your Criminal Activity Gets You A Longer Sentence In Louisiana

Mike Masnick — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:20:37 PDT

Here's a bizarre one. Reader withersteen alerts us to a strange new law that has been passed in Louisiana, which will add from one to ten years to your prison sentence if you use an online map in the process of committing a crime:

A bill headed to Gov. Bobby Jindal's desk would increase penalties for crimes committed with the use of an Internet-generated "virtual street-level map."

Senate Bill 151 by Sen. Robert Adley, R-Benton, provides for an additional year in prison for crimes committed using the maps, including acts of terrorism or other criminal offenses like burglary or stalking.

An act of terrorism using the maps could mean an additional 10 years behind bars.

Apparently the bill passed by a vote of 89-0. I'm trying to figure out what the rationale for this law is, and the best I can figure out is that this is a bizarre kneejerk reaction to services like Google's Street View, and the claims from some that such services could be used to "scout out" crime locations. Of course, the same is true of driving by a location. Will Senator Adley add a new bill that increases your prison sentence if you first drive by the location before committing the crime?

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Louisiana Wants To Put You In Jail If You Embarrass Anyone Under 17 Years Old Online

Mike Masnick — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:02:32 PDT

We've seen all sorts of crazy attempts to outlaw cyberbullying, but it seems that Louisiana is looking to really put themselves over the top in creating a law that creates a serious chilling effect on speech. As Eugene Volokh notes, the law would effectively ban any online speech designed to embarrass anyone under 17-years-old.

...would make it a misdemeanor to transmit any Internet communication or other computer communication "with the intent to coerce, abuse, torment, intimidate, harass, embarrass, or cause emotional distress to a person under the age of seventeen." This applies without regard to whether the message is communicated to the person, to some other individuals, or to the public at large. So under the law, all of these would likely be criminals (though, under a recent amendment the adults could be jailed for up to a year, while the minors could be jailed for up to six months):

A girl who sends her under-17-year-old boyfriend an e-mail telling him what a schmuck he is for having cheated on her, and hoping that he feels ashamed of himself.
A blogger, or a newspaper columnist, or an online commentator, who publishes something condemning an under-17-year-old criminal, hoping the criminal feels embarrassed and ashamed as a result.
A public or private school official e-mailing the parents of an under-17-year-old student a message about the student's misbehavior, hoping that the student will feel embarrassed and change his ways.
Parents e-mailing their under-17-year-old children telling the children that they should feel ashamed of some misbehavior.
A professional or amateur music critic or sports reporter writing a harsh review of an under-17-year-old performer's or athlete's behavior, hoping that the review will embarrass the performer or athlete into behaving more ethically, professionally, or competently.

I don't see how this survives a First Amendment challenge, but when you're grandstanding around something that gets press coverage like "cyberbullying," it's unlikely that the politicians supporting this even recognize or care about the unintended consequences.

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