What's Next? Eating? Talking?

ATLANTA: The Southeastern Legal Foundation today scrutinizes the passage of New York's ban on hand-held driver cell phone use, calling the ban "one of the most profoundly ill-conceived misfirings of legislative power since 'no horses inside the state capitol.'"

"Doesn't the New York state legislature have something better to do, like cut taxes or raise state police pay?" said Phil Kent, SLF President and New York native. "Our attorneys are dumbfounded not because state lawmakers as a rule are legislative rocket scientists, but rather because the new law is practically impossible to enforce."

Kent points out that law enforcement agencies across the nation are underfunded and, therefore, cannot attract needed recruits to fill positions. "Adding burdens to street officers and state police, which will now include peering into automobiles to gauge whether someone is speaking into a tiny cell phone, is a monumental waste of time," said Kent. "Behavior modification should be accomplished in the marketplace, not at the police station."

"As a conservative public interest law firm dealing with high-profile, highly charged constitutional issues, we are concerned that private industry -- again -- is the target of government action," said Kent.

Kent notes that during the Clinton era, private industry was the target of government action directed at harming free markets and legal industries at an alarming rate. "State lawmakers have watched Washington's exercise of power against Microsoft, tobacco, gun manufacturers and owners, health care providers, and others, and are now copying the tactics against telecommunications," said Kent. "Shame on New York for attacking a legal industry rather than working with the industry to adjust and adapt."

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