As I noted a couple days ago, Kyleigh’s Law was passed by the New Jersey General Assembly. THe only real hope left in defeating it is a veto by Governor Corzine.
Unfortunately there’s even less chance of that happening than there was of the bill not passing the GA. Corzine is doing extremely poorly in the polls for a sitting NJ governor. He can’t afford to oppose a bill that’s “for the kiddies” – and he can afford the embarrassment of a veto override even less.
So the bill is becoming law and will likely stay that way unless someone can find a way it violates the NJ Constitution and is willing to take the case as far as it needs to go (pretty damn unlikely in my opinion.
Because of all this, there’s only one real option left – subvert the law.
I can imagine two relatively easy ways to accomplish this.
- Ignore the law. I know I’ve seen numerous parents in messageboards say they will refuse to obey the law and will refuse to have the decals on any cars their children drive. If parents do this there will be so few decals on the road that the bill will have proven ineffective and may be open to challenge.
- Obey the law – and then some. As I understand it, the law only says that provisional drivers will be required to have the decals. There’s nothing that says non-provisional drivers can’t use them though. If tons of cars on the road have the sticker they’ll become useless for identification purposes, and police won’t be able to use them as a guide in pulling people over (and they’ll be even less likely to do so after pulling over a few non-provisional drivers). Once again, this will prove the bill ineffective and create an opportunity to challenge it legislatively.
Personally I would recommend the second path. The first one requires a relatively strong willingness to ignore the law. Many will do that, particularly if they feel the law puts their child in danger (as I noted, and some parents are beginning to realize, the decal is a bright orange sign that tells would-be assailants “I’m young and alone, please rape me!!!”).
However, if not enough do so the effort fails.
On the other hand, if the second route is taken there is no need for illegal action (although discretely placing decals on every car in a parking lot would certainly help). It also may work more easily – every time a police officer ends up pulling someone over for having the decal on the car and they aren’t a provisional driver some resentment towards the law will build and they’ll be a bit less likely to pull over the next car that has one if there’s too many people in it.
And even if the state does claim it’s illegal to use that decal, stickers and the like can be made cheaply over the internet. We just need them to be slightly different, but still look a lot like the decal itself, and the effect will be the same.
In the end, I suspect it’ll be a lot easier to get police to stop enforcing the law because there are too many decals than it will be to get legislators to repeal it because there aren’t enough.
(Note: In no way do I advocate engaging in any illegal activity. I am simply highlighting what may be effective ways to oppose a bad law)
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Good ideas…I like the idea of everyone putting a decal or similar sticker on their car as a former of civil disobedience of sorts. Kind of reminds me of those in Nazi-occupied Denmark (?) during the Holocuast who sympathized with the Jews and wore the Star of David on their clothing to confuse the Nazis. Of course, this is not as big of a deal as that was, but still, this is in some way an issue of civil rights and freedoms.
The main problem lies in the fact that it would be difficult to get a lot of people to put the stickers on their cars. It’s clear from your Facebook group alone that there is great division over this bill. People might be reduced to putting stickers on all the cars in the parking lot, as you wrote.
I agree that there is no question that Governor Corzine will sign this bill to avoid being embarrassed, although he probably supports it anyway. I personally hope that he gets voted out of office this year. Who are you considering voting for this year?
Thanks for your comment on my letter to Mr. Barnes. =) I’ll definitely tell you whether or not I get a response.
In the meantime, reading your blog made me feel as if the faults of Kyleigh’s Law have grown. Or perhaps they’re just a lot more visible. If enough attention is showered on the rejection of the bill, like a petition or strike, then the NJ assembly can’t simply ignore our opposition. Even if the bill may not directly violate the NJ Constitution, proof needs to be shown that it won’t sufficiently serve the public.
n-n
If parents would be parents we wouldn’t need any of this nonsence. the government runs enough of our live as it is! I think the cop need to worry more about criminals then young drivers most of them have nothing else better to do then to harrass innocent people! like the one who gave my brother a jay walking ticket in the middle of nowhere!!!
[...] it didn’t work – but that doesn’t mean we should give up hope. I already detailed two potential ways to resist the law. And that’s not [...]
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[...] the stickers going on sale this Monday, I think it’s worth highlighting this piece from an earlier post I did on Kyleigh’s Law; …there’s only one real option left – subvert the [...]