Armchair Constitutional Interpreters - Can A State Forbid Someone's Booze Use?

Great Debates
1

In my state, the law provides that if a person has been “driving … while intoxicated” or is a “habitual drunkard,” then a court may enter an order of interdiction prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages to or possession of alcoholic beverages by such a person.

In a recent case, an individual who was subject to such an order was arrested after being found with a bottle of rum, drunk. He protested the law, saying that it punishes people for being alcoholics, and that it violates the Equal Protection Clause by impermissibly dividing people by classification into alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and treating alcoholics more severely. He also contended that the penalty (up to a year in jail and a fine of $2,500) was too severe under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Is he right?

2

He might have more luck stating that the law violates the ADA. Isn’t alcoholism considered a disease under the rules of that act? Seems like the law in your OP, if it is in effect for an indefinite period of time, would violed the ADA.

Does the law have specific time limit, or is it tied in with some stipulationg to get treatment?

3

Only if being a “habitual drunkard” was the same as being an “alcoholic”.

4

Well, drunkard isn’t a protected class and the State can probably come up with a rational basis for the statute, so I don’t see him prevailing on an Equal Protection claim. If he’s making a claim that it’s an impermissable “status crime” under the Cruel and Unusual prohibition he’d have more luck, but that’s still pretty sketchy. SCOTUS ruled in Robinson v. California that a state can’t punish someone for their mere status as an addict, but they also said in Powell v. Texas that they can be punished for acts relating to that status, like being drunk in public. This is sort of different in that it punishes someone for what would otherwise be an illegal act due to their status as an alcoholic, so…interesting. Have to think about that one.

5

Oops…“what would otherwise be a legal act,” of cuss, not illegal.

6

Maybe he could argue that he has a constitutional right to alcohol under the 21st amendment? :slight_smile:

Seriously I thought SCOTUS set fairly narrow limits for what counts as a protected class: Race, religion, ethnicity, gender (?), and maybe orientation (??). I don’t think heavy drinkers count.

He might have better luck on the 8th amendment claim or the ADA claim John Maced suggests.

IANAL, but I do have a chair with arms on it.

7

For those wondering what the hell I’m talking about, here’s a brief law review article on status crimes.

8

Thst’s John Mace, not John Maced. :o

9

That was me in the past. :slight_smile:

10

Oh - forgot to mention his claim that the statutory scheme impermissibly discriminates against homeless alcoholics, his theory apparently being that although it’s illegal for ANY person interdicted to buy or possess alcohol, only homeless persons are at risk of prosecution; alcoholics who have homes can get drunk there safely.

11

Um, where does it say that only the drunkard’s rights are in play here, Bricker? The rights of other people on the roads not to be endangered by someone who can’t be trusted not to drive while drunk are pretty strong. So are the rights of anyone who might also be endangered by someone with diminished capacity to control himself. The guy’s obviously being targeted not for simply being who he is but for being a danger to others.

Or are you trying to hide a gotcha in there somewhere?

12

The ADA doesn’t protect people who are drunk, or people who say they were drunk because they are “alcoholics.” It protects people who are in recovery programs for alcoholism from being fired from their positions while in those programs. Otherwise, they are held to the same performance standards as all others — i.e. you get drunk you pay the same price -

13

ADA section 114(a) plainly provides as follows:

Plus, the ADA only applies to matters of employment, public accommodations, and public access. None of those would seem to apply to criminal sanctions.

As for the Constitutional question, I would simply point out that the 21st Amendment does not grant or recognize any constitutional right to consume alcohol, while the plain language of the amendment authorizes state governments to regulate the transportation and importation of alcohol. No federal law that I am aware of prohibits states from regulating alcohol sales, possession, or consumption. Indeed, ISTR that Utah kept its own prohibition laws in force until long after the end of federal prohibition. In the absence of federal law providing a right to purchase and/or consume alcohol, a state is completely free to adopt any damn fool regulation it wants on the subject.

14

:smack:

Sorry, quoted the wrong damn subsection. Should have been section 114©, which allows employers to prohibit the use of alcohol in the workplace, require them not to be under the influence in the workplace, hold them to the same standards or employment and job performance, etc.

15

Well, I’m not sure what method of analysis you’re using. He’s claiming an Equal Protection Violation because he, a homeless alcoholic, is being treated differently under the law than a non-homeless alcoholic, or a non-alcoholic homeless person, or a non-alcoholic, non-homeless person. He’s not talking about driving at all. I don’t follow how you’re proposing we analyze his claim.

16

Bricker, is this a debate or a question?

“Can a state forbid someone’s booze use?” is a question for law, and (of course taking into account jurisdictional differences) has a right or wrong answer. Either the person involved is protected under the Equal Protection Clause, or he isn’t.

“Should a state forbid someone’s booze use?” is a matter of debate.

17

Well, ordinarily I’d agree with you, but in the not-so-distant past, several posters have offered conclusory pronouncements on what the Equal Protection clause means, and to whom it applies. Based on those confident announcements, it seems to me that at the Straight Dope, the import of the federal Equal Protection clause is a matter for debate (or of gratuitous assertion), not actual… ya know… law, an’ stuff.

18

Mmmmm – Homebrew and I, and several others, have strong feelings on what the Equal Protection clause should be construed to mean – but I at least, and I’m pretty confident I speak for him as well, accept what the Supremes have construed it to mean as a matter of what “the law says” at present – as opposed to making arguments regarding what one ought to construe it to mean.

Legal debates do tend to get a bit ambiguous between matters of fact (“The statute explicitly says…”), matters of formal interpretation (“In Jones v. Nebraska, the court held that the ___ clause meant that…”), and matters of personal interpretation (“It’s only logical to reason, based on the Jones v. Nebraska ruling that the ___ clause means that…, so applied to this set of circumstances, it clearly means…”). For any offense I’ve rendered in such ambiguity, my apologies.

19

Can we get a synopsis of the metadebate for those of us just tuning in?

On the surface, it looks to me as if his claim of unequal treatment is specious, as it’d apply to any crime that could be committed indoors. Presumably a person with a home is likelier to get away with beating their dog than a homeless person would be, by virtue of being able to commit the crime in private; this doesn’t mean that a homeless person is being specfically targeted by an animal cruelty complaint.

His problem, if I’m reading it correctly, is that it’s really easy to catch him breaking the law, and that he doesn’t think that’s fair. That’s just not a very interesting complaint.

At least, that’s part of his complaint. Lemme think about the rest of it.

Daniel

20

As for other aspects of his complaint:

it punishes people for being alcoholics

In a sense, this may be accurate. Alcoholism is a disease, of course, and I think it’s very stupid to punish people for displaying symptoms of their disease. (I’d just as soon do away with all legal penalties for simple drug possession, for this reason). However, this is a moral argument, not a constitutional one; if it’s constitutional to jail people for having heroin, then it’s constitutional under some circumstances to jail people for having alcohol, or for having broccoli.

Is he being singled out for his alcoholism? Without knowing the details, I’m skeptical: it seems likelier to me that he’s being singled out for his illegal behavior that involved alcohol. Just as a criminal who committed a crime with a gun may be denied the right to carry a gun, a guy who commits a crime involving alcohol may be denied the right to carry alcohol. (Again, I think it’s a weird law, but the question isn’t whether I think the law is weird).

Does the law divide people into alcoholics and non-alcoholics? Apparently it does, by referring to “habitual drunkards.” That seems unnecessary to me: the law should criminalize verbs, not adjectives. If he habitually breaks public-drinking laws, that’s subtly different from his being a habitual drunkard. However, the phrase “habitual drunkard” may simply mean “a person who has been arrested three or more times for the following list of alcohol-related offenses,” in which case, I think this complaint would be specious.

Does the law treat alcoholics more harshly? I doubt it: there are a bajillion alcoholics who are allowed to buy alcohol, by virtue of not committing alcohol-related offenses. What it treats more harshly are those who commit said offenses, and I don’t see where this is unconstitutional.

That brings me back to the last complaint: it sounds as if he might be saying that his offenses (public drunkenness) is only due to the fact that, because he’s homeless, he cannot commit private drunkenness. That’s a good point, I think, and it speaks to the social ill of homelessness. But the solution is to find roofs, not necessarily to allow public drunkenness.

If his complaint were that public drunkenness laws were unconstitutional, I’d actually have a little more sympathy.

Daniel