Philadelphia fails it
I’m sure you heard about how Philadelphia suddenly realised it had a law on the books that made fortune-telling for money a crime, leading to the shutting down of a bunch of random frauds.
Turns out they’re backing out.
The city backed off after Mitchell’s attorney, John Raimondi, filed a request last week for a restraining order and preliminary injunction on the ground that the statute could be invoked only in cases of fraud.
“What we said is the law is part of the crimes code. You have to prove that someone has been taken advantage of, and you can’t expect L&I to enforce that,” Raimondi said.
Before the case even reached a judge, he said, “we got a call Monday afternoon from the City Solicitor’s Office saying they were agreeing with us and advising L&I to discontinue.”
L&I being the Department of Licenses and Inspections, within whose purview this law is.
Over the next few years, one or two of the more egregious abusers might be shut down, but what this essentially means is that the vast majority of fortune tellers are now in the clear again.
Fail, Philadelphia. Fail.
(Via James Randi’s Swift.)
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