By Charles S. Kramer
Every so often, one of us here at the Levison Group feels the need to review the laws enacted by the noble legislators of our nation’s states. In need of some interesting and questionable policy directives to brighten up my day, I volunteered to undertake the task this time around—I was NOT disappointed.
I learned that, beginning in 2014, residents of Wellington Kansas will no longer be allowed to own a feline basketball team. Yep, no cat-basketball teams will be allowed. It’s not that the town has any objections to cats playing basketball, it’s a numbers thing. They have limited their residents to owning only four cats, and not a whisker more, thus effectively outlawing cat soccer as well.
Although a pain to the famous cat-ladies, you can see the logic in the ordinance. The town was obviously being overrun by untrained cats and had had enough.
Nebraska lawmakers, however, must have had to look far and wide for a reason to enact my favorite new law. Under Nebraska law, drivers on mountains must now drive with caution and use the right hand edge of the highway. This might have made sense, if Nebraska had any mountains! Unfortunately Nebraska has no mountains.
In Illinois, it isn’t so much this year’s legislature that merits attention as it is thier forebearers. This year’s body enacted a law making it illegal in Illinois to have sex with a corpse. I’m not arguing with the law, but why did it have to be enacted? The reason is disturbingly simple, until this year, Illinois had NO LAW specifically forbidding sex with a dead person.
In the state of Washington, tobacco smoking is not illegal, but carrying or using an apparatus to smoke anything is. Thus, if you are willing to smoke your tobacco by lighting it in your hand, you can do so, but you can’t smoke it or even the newly legalized marijuana in a pipe. Using a similar logic, Moore, OK decided that it would make it illegal to drive with a trailer hitch on your car or truck.
Following up on Illinois’ antinecrophilia law’s view that it is better to have things be illegal then just the epitome of bad taste, it is also now officially illegal to use a dead person’s handicapped parking sign or license plate in that state as well.
In North Carolina you use to be able to steal your neighborhood restaurant’s grease, but no more. Steal less than $1,000 worth and it’s a misdeameanor, but $1,000 or more will get you a felony. So, you slippery criminals beware!
Yet as interesting as all these laws may be, none may be as interesting as the one lobbyists for the American Medical Association recently got pushed through in tinsel town. In Hollywood, it is now illegal to use an infant in a movie, unless you first get permission of a pediatrician. Parental rights be damned, it’s all up to the doctors (unless of course an insurance company is involved, because we all know that their policy administrators practice better medicine than your family physician).
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Under Analysis is a nationally syndicated column. Charles Kramer is a principal of the St. Louis, Missouri law firm Riezman, Berger PC. You may direct comments or criticisms about this column to the Levison Group c/o this newspaper, or direct to the Levison Group via e-mail, at comments@levisongroup.com.
© 2014 Under Analysis L.L.C.
