Government regulation of dress codes
Jasper County, South Carolina, is soon to be the latest to enact an unconstitutional ordinance protecting us all from the danger of sagging pants.
Jasper County Councilman LeRoy Blackshear proposed the ordinance in June. It would ban anyone from appearing in public "wearing his or her pants more than three (3) inches below his or her hips and thereby exposing his or her skin or intimate clothing."
Some councilmen expressed concerns about whether government should be in the business of enforcing dress codes. Blackshear, however, believes it is in our best interests:
"Some people are saying that government doesn't have any place to tell people how to dress if they're not buying their clothes. But government makes other laws about seat belts, open-container laws and DUI. All these are for benefit of our citizens," he said.
What is wrong with this picture? Let's begin with asking who does this law affect? 9 out of 10 persons wearing sagging pants are black youth. It is a current style, fad, or whatever you want to call it, and any law such as this is going to have a disproportionate impact on black persons. Not that most criminal laws are not already disproportionately enforced against minorities, but this law is actually aimed at black youth. Secondly, the law is unconstitutional on its face. Under our State Constitution, local municipalities cannot criminalize conduct that is not already criminal under state law.
So why do city and county councils continue to try? Boredom? We already have criminal laws for every conceivable action that could be harmful to ourselves or the people around us, so they must try to come up with more and more to justify their existence? If nothing else, they now have something to sit around and debate and vote on?
I've said before that I think it should be a prerequisite that any person seeking office as a legislator (drafting and voting on laws) or an executive such as governor or president (enforcing laws) must have a law degree. If your job wholly consists of drafting, interpreting, or enforcing the laws, you should at least have a minimal understanding of what a law is and of the Constitution. Possibly we could offer a minimal "crash course," possibly a year's worth of courses on the legislative process and Constitutional law, for non-lawyers who want to run for political office.
Maybe, when legislators are bored because they cannot come up with more criminal laws to debate and vote on, they could now begin to review the laws that we do have, and vote on getting rid of some of the unnecessary ones. This would create many many hours of productive work for legislative bodies, and possibly would benefit society rather than further restrict it. They could begin debating why we should un-enact laws that govern how we dress, or they could begin debating why we don't need to criminalize victimless conduct such as riding a motorcycle without a helmet or drug possession.
