Temporary Legislative Sanity in the State of Washington

DUIBlog reports on a couple of recent bills in the Washington state congress that died a quick and appropriate death. Let's hope it becomes a national trend.

First is a bill to restore DUI roadblocks after the state Supreme Court outlawed them as contrary to the state constitution. The US Supreme Court had given a pass on "minor" violations of your constitutional protections.

As many of you know, the United States Supreme Court in Michigan v. Sitz found that although sobriety checkpoints were apparent violations of the Fourth Amendment, they were only ”minor” violations. Permitting police to stop citizens without reason to believe they had done anything wrong, Chief Justice Rehnquist said, was permissible in view of the government’s ongoing “War on Drunk Driving”.

It's minor becuase members of the US Supreme Court have drivers.

Gov. Christine Gregoire suffered her first major defeat of the 2008 Legislature on Thursday when her push for drunken-driving checkpoints died without enough support from lawmakers

Good for them.

The second was an insane proposal to require those who've been convicted of DUI to use fluorescent-yellow license plates. That's the year after they've served any jail time and after their license suspension is over. That's after all the criminal penalties are finished they'd be required to wear a Star of David fluorescent-yellow license plates.

For some reason the Washington lege decided that was just a really bad idea.