For example, let’s say State-A passes a law making plucking your eyebrows illegal.
So, you go to State-B next door where eyebrow plucking is perfectly legal and you have your eyebrows plucked there.
Can State-A arrest you upon returning for having your eyebrows plucked? Can State-A arrest the person who drove you since that person abetted your crime? Or rather, can State-A expect these prosecutions to hold up on appeal?
Don’t think so. I’ve had some good strong beer in many states, and Utah never prosecuted me for doing so, despite its laws placing strict limits on the alcohol content of beer sold within Utah
AFAIK, one state doesn’t have jurisdiction over what you do in another state.
Is this about pot?
I don’t think State A can prosecute you for buying weed in State B; but they can prosecute you for possessing weed or driving while impaired.
They might not be able to arrest you for what you did in another state, but they could criminalize things done in their own state. For instance, they might pass a law that says that it’s illegal to leave the state for the purpose of eyebrow-plucking, or to make an appointment for eyebrow-plucking.
Real-world example, there are US laws against traveling abroad for the purpose of having sex with minors. Even if you find some country where it’s legal, the US can still arrest you.
The US does prosecute citizens and residents for international sex tourism.
No, although that works too.
This is about Georgia passing a new abortion law which would (among other things) punish women who get an abortion out of state.
Can they do that, though? Pass a law that says “it’s illegal to leave the state for the purpose of eyebrow-plucking, or to make an appointment for eyebrow-plucking”, that is. There are US laws against “sex tourism”, but are there any precedents for an American state government seeking to apply that kind of jurisdiction, and would it even be legal/constitutional for an American state government to try to do so? (Especially for travel from one American state to another, to do something that is legal under the laws of the other American state.)
That sex-tourism example is a good one, and well within the federal government’s aegis.
But let’s say that the great state of East Dakota outlawed eyebrow-plucking even while it remained legal in both South Dakota and at the federal level. If East Dakota passed a law criminalizing leaving the state for eyebrow-plucking purposes, wouldn’t that violate the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause?
I’m trying to remember how things were in the bad old days before Roe v. Wade when women with enough money would travel someplace like New York where it was legal to get an abortion then go back home to Kansas or Georgia or wherever…
I know women who did exactly that. Can’t recall whether they had concerns about being arrested back home or not.
I’m curious about an answer as well, but this example is of a Federal law, which over-arches state laws. Could Nevada pass a state law that would prosecute a person for traveling to Arizona for the purpose of eyebrow-plucking? Assuming there is no over-arching Federal law.
Wow. Severely ninja’d.
The linked Slate article mentions that the law in question makes fetuses full individual people, and in doing so raises a huge issue: any woman who’s pregnant and in jail is carrying a full legal person inside of her, so by putting her in jail they’re imprisoning one wholly innocent person along with another, potentially non-innocent person—and without due process for the fetus.
I suspect this law wasn’t fully thought through on a number of levels. Again, I invite any lurking constitutional scholars (I’m looking at you, President Obama!) to weigh in on the commerce-clause issue I and others have asked about.
That problem is discussed in the article too.
Yes. That’s what I said.
[Moderating]
A reminder that this thread is about one particular question, of laws between different states. The Georgia abortion law in general is already under discussion in GD, which is where that discussion belongs. If a post can’t apply to the hypothetical eyebrow-plucking law, then it’s probably not a good fit for this thread.
What about cases where a teenage couple cross a state line to take advantage of a lower age of consent? Both are willing, and of legal age in the state where the deed takes place.
I would think it would really depend on the law. If the law says that it in not legal to pluck one’s own or another person’s eyebrows in the state of East Dakota, then going to Minnesota to get your eyebrows plucked would be perfectly legal, provided Minnesota has not outlawed eyebrow plucking. Even if Minnesota had outlawed eyebrow plucking, the state of East Dakota couldn’t do anything about your getting your eyebrows plucked in Minnesota other than inform Minnesota law enforcement that they believe there are people violating their eyebrow plucking law.
If the law says that all people in the state of East Dakota must have un-plucked eyebrows, that would be different. But, eyebrow hairs, like all hairs, fall out on their own, and I suspect that there are some conditions that can make a person’s eyebrows fall out naturally, so it might be difficult to craft such a law–that is, everyone has plucked eyebrows to one extent or another.
I had a long post eaten by gerbils. Short answer is that in Bigelow v. Virginia, the Supreme Court said that State A can’t arrest a person for what happens in State B. Bigelow concerned New York abortion clinics advertising for clients in a Virginia newspaper. Virginia outlawed abortion ads. The court said that the ban was a violation of the first amendment, but it also said:
There is a theory that the state can regulate conspiring within its border to travel to State B for these purposes but I disagree. However, it’s really hard to predict what motivated reasoning will lead the Supreme Court to endorse when they hate plucked eyebrows so much.
Does this come down to a matter of intention? Suppose you were in another state and you incidentally decide on a whim to get those eyebrows plucked, but you didn’t travel out of state for that specific purpose, does that still count?
I only mentioned that point in the Slate article because, if the Georgia law wasn’t very well-thought-out with in one way (due process) it might not be well-thought-out with regard to the commerce clause either—and the applicability of the commerce clause is still an outstanding question (at least for me).
In retrospect, maybe I could have raised that point without going into the somewhat-charged details of Georgia’s law. Sorry.
That would make for a creative defense against the international sex tourism laws mentioned previously: “No, your honor, when I left the country I had no intention of having sex with a minor. Once I got to _____ (I don’t even know where people go for that sort of thing - Thailand maybe?) I decided on a whim that I wanted to have sex with a minor.”