Happy Valentine's Day! The Court of Appeal decides to give us some presents on this most solemn of days, with no less than four published opinions for us to peruse. Yay!
So I decided I'd talk about the one that is perhaps most likely to be viewed as a joke. One perhaps more appropriate for April Fool's Day than today, yet, here it is.
(1) The County of Monterey says that you can't keep more than 4 roosters on your property, unless you have more than 200 roosters. No joke. There are other exceptions too; little kids can keep more than four roosters, you can't keep more than four roosters if you've been convicted of cockfighting (but you can, apparently, keep fewer than 4 -- or more than 200), etc. In short, there's a sophisticated rooster-keeping set of regulations for residential property in Monterey. If you want to have between 4 and 200 roosters on your property, you've got to get a permit.
Who knew?!
(2) Plaintiff filed a lawsuit that claimed that these rooster-keeping regulations were unconstitutional, and deprived him of his property right to keep more than 4 roosters on his property, was a taking, violated the Interstate Commerce Clause, etc. etc. etc.
No joke either.
Look, the law here may well be mostly silly. A lot of the exceptions are somewhat difficult to justify on a categorical legal basis.
But it's rational basis review. There's a reason why we might want to let little kids in 4-H programs, for example, have half a dozen roosters. Maybe it's not a particularly GOOD reason, but it's a reason.
Which is why plaintiff's challenge was doomed from the outset. As any good student of constitutional law would have been able to tell you. And as the Court of Appeal explains.
Just go ahead and get the permit, Mr. Perez. I hope and expect that if there's a good reason why you want or need, say, 20 roosters on your property, the County of Monterey will give it to you.
And why, hopefully, your neighbors won't subsequently hate you every single morning at dawn.
