Judges vs. Telepathists
| As of 11/07/2018 03:10PM, the Laws database is current through 2018 Chapters 1-355 |
§ 109. Supplementary regulatory powers of the commission.
Notwithstanding any inconsistent provision of law, the commission
through its rules and regulations or in allotting dates for racing,
simulcasting or in licensing race meetings at which pari-mutuel betting
is permitted shall be authorized to:
1. permit racing at which pari-mutuel betting is conducted on any or
all dates from the first day of January through the thirty-first day of
December, inclusive of Sundays but exclusive of December twenty-fifth
and Easter Sunday; and
2. fix minimum and maximum charges for admission at any race meeting.
Are the Supreme Court Justices all textualists now?
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
PHOTO: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
Liberals are predicting that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will rewrite laws according to their policy preferences. So someone should point out that the conservatives this week behaved as if laws mean what they say regardless of the policy outcome.
In Mount Lemmon Fire District v. Guido, the Court unanimously ruled Tuesday that small municipal employers could be sued under federal law for age discrimination. The case involved two laid-off firefighters of Mount Lemmon, Arizona, who said their employer violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. That law defines “employer” as a person “engaged in an industry affecting commerce who has twenty or more employees,” and the “term also means (1) any agent of such a person, and (2) a State or political subdivision of a State.”
Foreign Edition Podcast
Mount Lemmon Fire District argued it isn’t an employer under the law since it employed fewer than 20 workers. But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority, “the ordinary meaning of ‘also means’ is additive rather than clarifying.’” The Court’s conservatives agreed with liberals though the ruling may subject cities to more litigation.
The Court on Monday also heard oral arguments in Virginia Uranium Inc. v. Warren, which challenges Virginia’s 1983 moratorium on uranium mining. Owners of a uranium deposit in south-central Virginia claim the state mining ban is pre-empted by the federal Atomic Energy Act’s regulation of radiation safety for milling and tailings.
While states have nearly carte blanche to regulate mining within their borders, the landowners say the legislature was motivated by concern for the safety of uranium processing—not mining. But this is reading a legislative intent unsupported by the text.
As Justice Neil Gorsuch mused, “Don’t we get into trouble . . . guessing what the motivations of a state legislature are and all the methodological, epistemological, and federalism questions that that raises?” One problem with divining legislative intent, as Justice Elena Kagan pointed out, is that courts could come down different ways on identical state laws merely “because the legislative history was different.”
Chief Justice John Roberts raised a hypothetical in which some lawmakers asserted that banning mining “is a great way to keep nuclear energy out of the state. What is the purpose of that legislation? How do you analyze that question?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor chimed in: “Is this going to require deposing every single legislative member?” All good questions.
The judiciary’s job is not to be legislative mind-readers. As Justice Gorsuch noted, the Court has allowed investigations into legislative intent in the narrow context of applying the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet the left has abused this exception to allege racial animus behind all sorts of neutrally applied state laws including voter ID requirements and bans on local minimum wages.
Upholding Virginia’s uranium moratorium may make it harder to challenge state actions that thwart mineral development like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s veto of a natural gas pipeline on the pretext of protecting the state’s water supply. But it will be a victory for judicial modesty if liberals join conservatives in agreeing that deducing legislative intent is a rabbit hole judges shouldn’t be diving down.
