Oh, we’re not just getting #SmarterGov at the federal level, people. The states are making their governments smarter too!
TALLAHASSEE — A South Florida Internet cafe operator, whose clientele is primarily migrant workers seeking computer time, is suing the state, challenging the constitutionality of the Legislature’s ban on illegal slot machines.
The lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on behalf of Incredible Investments, LLC, owned by Consuelo Zapata, alleges that the Legislature effectively applied the ban to all computers when it defined illegal slot machines as any “system or network of devices” that may be used in a game of chance. The state effectively made every smartphone and computer an illegal device, the plaintiff argues.
“They rushed to judgment and they took what they saw as a very specific problem and essentially criminalized everything,” said Justin Kaplan of the Miami law firm of Kluger, Kaplan, Silverman, Katzen & Levine, which is representing Zapata.
The argument, crafted with the help of constitutional law attorney and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, is based on the assumption that the definition of illegal slot machines is now so broad that an illegal game could be potentially played on every computer. Under the law, the Legislature’s own computers, “the ones they used to draft this legislation, are illegal,” Kaplan said.
Well, laws don’t apply to lawmakers, everybody knows that. So they don’t need to worry. But everybody else in Florida: Turn this off right now. Do it. They could be coming for you any moment!
Are they gone?
Ha ha, stupid Florida. One potential upside of a statewide ban on computers, though: It’ll be tougher to plan the riots when George Zimmerman is acquitted.
(Hat tip: Mike Riggs, Floridian)