Thursday, August 25, 2016

Reyes v. Lynch (9th Cir. - Aug. 25, 2016)

I think this line from today's opinion by Judge Kleinfeld is even funnier when read in isolation.

He's describing the "normal" liberties that "regular" people have (as opposed to, say, people on probation).  He says:

"Those of us who have not been convicted of a crime are not required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or keep some probation office advised of our address, we may own firearms if we choose, and we can go to a restaurant even if we know that servers or other customers may be drug users."

Freedom!  That's pretty much a comprehensive list.

Parenthetically, maybe I have a somewhat distorted perspective on things because I live in California.  But I think you'd be hard pressed to find a restaurant -- any restaurant -- where it's not the case that "servers or other customers may be drug users."  At least low-level, joint-on-occasion types.

That's probably mostly true even if you look at only the servers in isolation.  But once you add the customers as well?  No brainer.