Gabriel Malor summarizing this Eugene Volokh post: “An age discrimination suit against Dick’s for refusing to sell long guns to individuals between age 18 and 21 looks like a winner in Oregon, where it is lawful for an 18 year-old to purchase one and which has heavy-handed public accommodation laws.”
7 Comments
There’s another one that’s been filed in Florida. Do they also have heavy-handed public accommodations laws?
Most age discrimination laws protect only older folks as a class… Does this mean we can see “the x says i’m too young to drink, but that’s age discrimination” or maybe even “i’m 14 been driving farm vehicles since I was y but the state will not issue me a license”? Just questioning how widely this applies since my understanding is that the law is the law and is supposed to be evenly applied. Silly me. đŸ˜€
Oregon and Florida has specific laws outlawing discrimination in selling to people who would otherwise be allowed to own the product. There are specific exemptions for alcohol.
Florida legislators have introduced the “Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act” which includes a provision that no one other than the military and law enforcement can purchase a weapon if they are under the age of 21.
The bill establishes the Office of Safe Schools within the Department of Education and also establishes the “Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program” which would allow teachers to carry a weapon after 132 hours of training and psychological tests. (This is ironic in that the authors of the bill live in a county where law enforcement officers are being fired for all sorts of issues that the test is said to weed out.)
I am struck by the fact that the bill increases the size of government, which is against the campaign promises of all of the bill’s sponsors. It will force the raising of taxes at a time when Florida schools need the funds for things like buildings, books, etc.
Finally, I am reminded of the oft quoted idea that any bill that is named after a victim is generally not a good bill as it relies on emotion rather than a dispassionate discussion of the bill’s merits. Here, the citizens of Florida not only get a bill named after victims, but a portion of the bill is named after another victim.
They should just name them as a class:
The OMG we should do something law, or in the alternative the kneejerk act
The age discrimination law that is most visible in American life is the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. If memory serves, ADEA as interpreted by courts 1) applies only to over-40s; 2) does not forbid “reverse discrimination,” that is, more favorable treatment of older persons; 3) as its name implies, restricts freedom in an employment setting but not in the context of retail sales or other so-called public accommodations.
States however may pass laws that are of broader application in one, two, or all three of these dimensions. A suit against the Dick’s policy would stand no chance of success except under a state law liberal along all these dimensions. To answer g.u.’s question, I have not tried to look up whether Florida has such a broader law and, if so, whether it duplicates the unusually broad features of Oregon law.
And now a new one from Michigan.
https://reason.com/volokh/2018/03/07/michigan-lawsuit-against-dicks-sporting
Eugene Volokh wonders whether Dick’s had its lawyers do their research on the state law environment before announcing its new policy. The whole episode can be filed under “Laws Hailed As Progressive At The Time Which Lead To Not-So-Progressive Results, Part 83,729.”