Skip to main content

Kresha's Law ruled unconstitutional

Representative Ronald Kresha is the author of an unconstitutional 2017 law that made it illegal for Minnesota businesses and individuals that have contracts with the State of Minnesota while boycotting Israel or companies that do business with Israel. Not only is the law anti-business but it’s a violation of the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Add that to the fact that it added another government regulation for businesses to deal with and Kresha’s law was just dumb. But Rep. Kresha was just following orders from his party’s national leadership. The same law that he wrote and helped pass in Minnesota was passed in states like Kansas and Arizona. It seems that so-called conservatives in those states were just as willing to be anti-business and anti-1st Amendment as Rep. Kresha.

Rep. Kresha, and legislators in those states, were warned their legislation was unconstitutional but they barged ahead any way. Now, in September, a federal judge in Phoenix Arizona ruled that the Arizona law is unconstitutional and a violation of the First Amendment. The Minnesota and Kansas laws will be next. Rep. Kresha was just wasting his time, and our tax dollars, in St. Paul by passing pointless and unconstitutional legislation.

Here's what Judge Diane Humetewa wrote in her ruling that says Arizona can't enforce the anti-boycott law:


Judge Diand J. Humetewa (Wikipedia)
“The First Amendment protects political association as well as political expression,” Humetewa wrote.

“At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle that each person should decide for himself or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence,” the judge wrote, quoting prior U.S. Supreme Court rulings. “Indeed, if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matter of opinion or force citizens to confess by work or act their faith therein.”

“Collective boycotting activities undertaken to achieve social, political or economic ends is conduct that is protected by the First Amendment,” she continued.

The State of Arizona has said it will appeal the ruling.

You can see an article about the ruling at:

https://tucson.com/news/local/judge-bars-arizona-from-enforcing-law-that-forces-companies-not/article_57c3ef4e-43ac-56e1-a083-9132bfb08177.html?utm_source=Communications&utm_campaign=7147d694ea-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_01_01_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c67d07604c-7147d694ea-248065289&mc_cid=7147d694ea&mc_eid=1c78b00106

Tim
Central Minnesota Political

PS: You can read the full Minnesota Statute here: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/2017/cite/3.226?keyword_type=all&keyword=israel

Curiously the statute ends with this statement: "This section does not prohibit a vendor from engaging in free speech or expression protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution or the Constitution of the state of Minnesota."

So, what was the point?




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Senator Gazelka: Prepare for End Times

Review by John King “Marketplace Ministers are part of how the Lord will reach the peoples of the earth in these last days.” Author Paul Gazelka wrote this astonishing sentence near the conclusion of his 2003 book, Marketplace Ministers , but it is a good place to start here because it so neatly encapsulates the message of the book which is that business people, by spreading the Gospel, are in a unique position to prepare us, for the end of the world.   Gazelka, an insurance salesman in Baxter, Minnesota, devotes chapters one through four to the story of his religious calling and how he came to adopt the “marketplace” as his personal ministry.  He goes to some length, relying in part on the “Fivefold Path” from Ephesians to convince the reader that the marketplace is a legitimate pulpit to spread the Word.  The remainder of the book, using personal anecdotes and biblical passages, he explains how a marketplace ministry would function and what its usefulness w...

Super-emitting frequent fliers responsible for 50% of aviation CO2

U.S. airlines received a $15 billion subsidy in December’s COVID relief package. The subsidy was for the companies to re-employ thousands of their furloughed employees and keep them on the payroll until at least the end of the first quarter of this year. Congress, and the President, attached no other strings to the huge subsidy, even though airlines social costs, in terms of climate disruption, are huge. In 2018 airlines produced a billion tons of CO2 and benefited from a $100 billion subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, a report published in the November 2020 journal Global Environmental Change, pointed out. The report, summarized in The Guardian on November 17th, drew together data to provide a global picture of the impact of frequent fliers. The conclusion reached by the study’s authors, led by Stefan Gössling at Linnaeus University in Sweden, is that a tiny fraction of the global population benefits from the highly subsidized airline industry while the rest...

Step aside Republicans; Minnesotans want electric vehicles

Late last month Senator Paul Gazelka, the Republican leader of the Senate, told the Minnesota Reformer that the Republican controlled Senate would likely fire the acting Commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Laura Bishop, if the Agency, at the behest of the Governor, went ahead with the Clean Car Rule. The rule would require automakers to increase the number of electric vehicles they deliver to Minnesota auto dealers. Gazelka told The Reformer that he’d had “a conversation” with Bishop about the rule. Bishop has not been confirmed by the Senate. Gazelka, and his Republican colleagues, claim that electric vehicles are too expensive and that the rule would be a burden to Minnesotans. Gazelka, and the rest of his Party are wrong. They aren’t paying attention to the economics of EV ownership and they are not paying attention to consumer preferences. Way back in September 2019, Consumer Reports reported on a study of Minnesotans they had done in collaboration with the...