“UnSessioning” Valentine’s Day

Are you planning a romantic dinner with a spouse or special friend tonight? 

You might want to consult a lawyer first.

If your plans involve wine, Minnesota has 47 statutes that apply.  Flowers?  There are nine more laws to keep in mind.  Candy?  13 more.  There are even four separate statutes that apply to chocolate.

And heaven forbid if you go plan to go out dancing after dinner; 15 more state laws apply to dance.

Valentine's Day offers a special opportunity to call attention to the need for an "UnSession" of the Minnesota legislature. 

Since statehood in 1858, Minnesota lawmakers have sought to pass laws that made sense at the time and improved our great state.  Unlike fine wine, however, not all of those laws got better with age.  Some simply went bad.

This is why I applaud and fully support Gov. Dayton’s call for an “UnSession” in 2014, marking an all-out effort this year to repeal obsolete and redundant old laws that no longer serve any purpose other than to clutter up our statute books and make them less understandable to the people they are designed to serve.

Literally hundreds of pages of old, obsolete laws can be found throughout our statute books.

For example, did you know it is a misdemeanor for your local grocery store to sell chocolate-covered strawberries, or any other fruit for that matter, in anything but a 16-ounce container? No one knows why anymore, and the law is no longer enforced.  Yet it remains on the books.

Another unenforced, decades-old law makes fornication a misdemeanor for single men, married men, and single women, but perfectly legal for a married woman. 

Unless you plan to tap out a romantic note via telegraph, Minnesota’s 150-year-old telegraph law has probably outlived its usefulness as well.

Then there is that 1978 law that expressly makes seduction legal.  Evidently, in the 120-year history of Minnesota prior to that point, pitching woo had been a crime.  That law no longer needs to exist.

Notably, it bears mentioning that most laws on the books still work fine and make sense.  For instance, many of the 47 statutes that reference wine and the 26 laws that apply to flowers, candy and chocolate offer basic consumer protections or protect public safety.  No one is seeking to do away with any law that does that.

But the 2014 legislative session presents a perfect opportunity to jettison old, obsolete and redundant statutes.  We have a governor and scores of legislators committed to streamlining laws and regulations that no longer make sense, are no longer enforced, and simply get in honest people’s way.  Simply put, it is time for a healthy spring cleaning of Minnesota’s law books.

Anyone who questions whether this is needed only need look at all the laws applicable on Valentine's Day.

For every new law State Rep. Joe Atkins passes, he tries to repeal at least one obsolete law that no longer makes sense.  Atkins favorite so far was in 2009, when he repealed the law that prohibited sale of Minnesota-made beer at the Minnesota State Fair.