Short Circuit 346 | Not My Responsibility

Short Circuit

When it comes to the law, it’s the responsibility of the government. After all, that’s why we have a government, right? Well, it seems the government is responsible for enforcing the law . . . until it would rather not. This week we have a pair of cases where different governments have wriggled out of their enforcement responsibilities in an effort to avoid a lawsuit. And in each case it worked. First, Erica Smith Ewing of IJ tells us of a rarity in the federal courts of appeals: A Contracts Clause lawsuit that was successful—at least, it was successful in stating a Contracts Clause claim. Later on, however, the city of New York “remembered” that it didn’t actually enforce the law in question—a pandemic-era rent-collection abatement—which lead to the plaintiff landlords losing their standing. There’s a silver lining for them—but it’s very much a lining. Then we’re off to the Tenth Circuit where IJ’s Paul Sherman explains Utah’s online age verification law and how the state designed it to only be enforced by private actors. Similar to the Texas abortion law which the Supreme Court tussled with a few terms ago, the statute’s intent is to get the state out of the enforcement business, and therefore get the courts out of the business of finding content-based restrictions on speech unconstitutional under the First Amendment. And it seems this attempt succeeded, for now.

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