Going to a garage sale in Louisiana? Take your credit card or checkbook. It’s now illegal to use cash to buy used stuff.
Maybe bartering will get a boost.
While it seems to be government and Big Brother at its most intrusive, I’m wondering just what constitutional provision or legal precedent this violates? Can a state declare US currency to NOT be legal tender?
I’m not sure I understand why would be made law, unless it’s an anti-pawn measure. However, this has nothing to do with legal tender. The seller is still accepting payment in dolalrs - just not immediate cash.
Holy cow, I can’t believe that passed and is now a law.
The only thing more stupid than this law is the comment section
I don’t see anything unconstitutional about it. Looking at the text of the bill (embedded pdf) that the law exempts non-profit entities (so most thrift stores) and people who deal in used goods less than once a month (so most garage sales), but people who run flea markets on a regular basis might have problems.
The intention appears to be a way of stopping sales of stolen property, since a paper trail would not be desirable for either buyer or seller.
The article specifically mentions that garage sales are an exception.
But I can still use cash to buy weed, right?
My dollar bills say, “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” If you can’t legally pay someone with one, that would seem like the law has everything to do with legal tender.
Not used weed.
The PDF might, but the article doesn’t:
Maybe the article’s language is ambiguous. I interpreted “language…covers stores” to mean that they were included, not excluded.
Anyway, it looks like there are quite a few loopholes. Just what we need, a bad law with loopholes.
As written, the law seems to prohibit secondhand dealers from paying cash for stuff. So it would not seem to apply to yard sales, or even to people who want to buy used stuff. Only to dealers who are buying stuff.
Anyway, I’m not an expert on legal tender rules, but I doubt that this violates any federal or constitutional laws. In many jurisdictions, attorneys are required to pay money to their clients by means of a trust check and cash is forbidden. These laws have been in place for decades. Fundamentally, requiring secondhand junk dealers to use something besides cash is no different.
And maybe some thieves will be discouraged. I look forward to the day when all transactions are trackable.
Shit! I was about to start marketing Bongwater in Louisiana.
Dear People of Louisiana,
Protip: If you vote in ignorant, bible-thumping yokels, sometimes they write stupid laws.
Sincerely,
Lobohan
The first that came to me was that this is an attempt to curb the sale of used video games.
I’m not. I don’t see the over arching need for all private transactions to be trackable. It is an invitation for abuse.
I once heard the famous criminal-defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey give a campus lecture where he recommended making it illegal for anyone to possess more than $200 in cash at any time, and we should make practically all our purchases with credit cards, which leave a paper trail. It had nothing to do with tax evasion – this measure, Bailey was sure, would almost wipe out violent-crimes-for-profit, because all of them depend on untraceable cash.
Good username/post combo.
It is, and I used to be afraid of stuff like this, but life has become far more transparent over the last 20 years and things have improved dramatically.
Nowadays there are cameras on every block in the big city; peoples’ movements can be tracked with cell phone records; and so on. However, this information has generally NOT been used, for example, to harass the political enemies of those in power. On the contrary, it is regularly used to exculpate the innocent and to convict the guilty. And to subject the powerful to the scrutiny they deserve.
So you object to this law because it means garage sales can’t accept cash.
Or maybe not.
Once you learn that garage sales are not covered… you still don’t like the law.
Anyway, it’s most likely legal. Blogger Eugene Volokh just discussed this case and pointed out a recent federal district case in New York that addressed a similar law, Genesee Scrap & Tin Baling v. City of Rochester, 558 F.Supp 2d 432, Dist Ct, W. Dist of NY, 2008. The court there held the ordinance constitutional, saying that the law doesn’t declare cash to no longer be legal tender – it just specifies the form in which a particular category of transactions must be made. The check used to make payment is, ultimately, a promise of payment in legal tender, upon presentation of the check to a bank.
While I don’t share your enthusiasm for such Big Brotherism, I read a book not long ago (sorry, can’t remember the title or author offhand) that said in the future everything you do will be tracked; you will be photographed everywhere you go and what and where you spend will be visible at all times, at least to the “proper” authorities.
The author’s point wasn’t that this was good or bad, but that we’d pretty damn well get used to it because it’s going to happen anyway.
It covers more than the previous state of no law. And it seems like an invitation to an underground economy, much like Prohibition produced. Or for legitimate commerce to exit the state, especially at border towns.
To turn the table around…so you like the law even if it might be inappropriate, oppressive or illegal, as long as it doesn’t cover much?
It reminds me a little (no, it’s not a perfect analogy) of the situation at US military bases (at least the way it worked in the Korean War and Vietnam era; I don’t know how it works now). The military was issued scrip to replace greenbacks. Ostensibly, it was to be used only in military transactions; you could convert it to local currency for transactions with locals. But the locals got used to accepting military scrip anyway.
Then, without warning, the military shut down the bases and forced all personnel to exchange one issue of scrip with another (different color scheme, so it was easy to tell). One day later, your old scrip was worthless, and since the natives couldn’t exchange anything, their stash was worthless, too.
Supposedly, this was done to remove funds from drug and other black market dealers, but the end result was to screw the little guy who trusted US soldiers. And from then on, the locals wouldn’t accept US scrip at all. And if you forgot about some bills at the bottom of your locker, you were screwed, too.
And the US government got a windfall from the non-redeemed paper.
Perhaps more strident than realistic, here’s one slightly radical opinion.
Lawmakers in Louisiana have effectively banned its citizens from freely using United States legal tender. Another opinion, not a legal argument.