Posted on 07/05/2002 5:21:02 PM PDT by chance33_98
Lawsuit, as promised, challenges anti-smoking ordinance
KULR-8 Television & The Associated Press
HELENA, July 5 - Several businesses have filed a lawsuit challenging the anti-smoking ordinance that Helena voters adopted last month in the primary election.
It is the stiffest such ordinance in Montana, prohibiting smoking in any public indoor place, including restaurants, bars and casinos. Many of those businesses and others campaigned against it, but it gained 61% of the vote.
The lawsuit, which opponents had promised they would file, says the city has no authority to adopt such an ordinance, and that it violates property rights and is causing economic hardship. It names the city and the Lewis and Clark County Board of Health and the city-county health department.
The way the law is written, if an establishment has a smoking section, it almost has to be a separate building, where there is NO chance of smoke entering an area where it's not supposed to be. Restaurants can go total NON, total smoking, or "provisional non-smoking" which means they have to jump thru a lot of hoops in keeping smokers and their smoke absolutely isolated from the rest.
NO KIDDING!!!!! wow! SOMETHING needs to be done before those IDIOTS get their way!!!!!!!!!
Boy, metesky, you sure are fired up toNIGHT! haha
Who counted the votes and who voted?
This is a loser right from the start. Doesn't the smoker's side have any intelligent lawyers?
The precedent has been set and courts in all the other states where it has been fought this way have said the cities have a perfect right to regulate public health, that public health regulations do not infringe property rights and they could care less about the owners economic hardship in the face of a looming public health crisis.
This battle has to be fought with facts and science and the facts are that SHS harms nobody.
Isn't there one God damned lawyer out there with the brains and the intestinal fortitude to fight and win this on the facts or are all the lawyers just flippin' interested in getting on the damn gravy train?
Even with the "jumping through hoops" section, this law seems a lot more fair than most places which don't even have the option.
Part of the problem "of the failure of those who believe in liberty to fight back" is they do not know what U.S. Constitution provisions to stand on when making a case for liberty.
Just as "the right to an abortion" is constitutionally defended by the 9th amendment, the same liberty defense can be used for the activity of smoking a cigarette, pipe, or cigar.
For those who do not know the context of the 9th amendment, here is a refresher: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to DENY or DISPARAGE others retained by the people.
In addition, where does any governmental body, whether local, state, or federal, get "legislative jurisdiction" over the use of private property? When did a privately owned restaurant or drinking establishment become public property?
And when did the 5th amendment become frivolous and non-binding on governmental bodies? "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
We citizens have to start exerting these constitutionally protected, inalienable rights, either at the public hearings at local government meetings, calling out our state and federal representatives, in person, by telephone, or by e-mail or start filing federal lawsuits seeking injunctions of these unconstitutional laws from being implemented.
This is my strategy and I am implementing it.
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