Has any law failed a test of rational basis? Has any federal or state law ever been struck down because it had no rational basis, in a case where that was the standard for constitutionality?
The following article found seventeen cases between 1971 and 2014 when the Supreme Court, purportedly applying rational basis scrutiny, held that the law in question violated the equal protection clause. Holoszyc-Pimentel, Raphael. &quot;Reconciling rational-basis review: when does rational basis bite?&quot; New York University Law Review 90: 2070-2117 (2015) The article's introduction appendix to the article gives brief summaries of all seventeen. (As well as one extra case, Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co. in which the majority opinion did not mention rational-basis scrutiny, but two concurring opinions, signed by a total of six justices, did.) The author specifically cites Romer v. Evans as mentioned in bdb484's answer. Another quotable example is USDA v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973), which examined a provision that denied food stamps to households where unrelated people were living together (e.g. hippie communes). Its second-to-last sentence: But the classification here in issue is not only &quot;imprecise,&quot; it is wholly without any rational basis. Incidentally, Holoszyc-Pimentel's thesis is that in these cases, the Court was not truly applying rational-basis scrutiny, but some other slightly stronger standard, which the author calls &quot;rational basis with bite&quot;. The full list of cases from the article: United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013); Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996); Quinn v. Millsap, 491 U.S. 95 (1989); Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co. v. Cty. Comm’n, 488 U.S. 336 (1989); City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S. 432 (1985); Hooper v. Bernalillo Cty. Assessor, 472 U.S. 612 (1985); Williams v. Vermont, 472 U.S. 14 (1985); Metro. Life Ins. Co. v. Ward, 470 U.S. 869 (1985); Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982); Zobel v. Williams, 457 U.S. 55 (1982); U.S. Dep’t of Agric. v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973); James v. Strange, 407 U.S. 128 (1972); Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715 (1972); Weber v. Aetna Cas. &amp; Sur. Co., 406 U.S. 164 (1972); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972); Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U.S. 56 (1972); Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971). Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422 (1982)
While it is true that jury instructions are typically less than optimal, it is ideological hyperbole or cynicism to claim that instructions are purposely confusing. The ultimate source of the confusion is that the legal system has to assume (pretend) that it has clear-cut rules that any reasonable person can easily understand and automatically apply. In order to maintain uniformity of the law, there is an externally-defined instruction that a judge may read (rather than giving his personal spin on what "reasonable doubt" means or what the relationship is between "reasonable doubt" and convicting a defendant). Once the relevant body of government (committee of judges and lawyers) has established the apparently correct formula for expressing the applicable legal concept, they don't mess with it, until SCOTUS overturns decisions enough times based on crappy instructions. Legal professionals are trained to carefully scrutinze language so as to achieve a single interpretation of a given clause (never mind the fact that there turn out to be many such interpretations). Since they can apply these interpretive rules, it is assumed that anyone can apply them. But in fact, we know that people don't just use literal semantic principles to reach conclusions – but the law resist pandering to that imperfection in human behavior. There is a huge literature on problems of jury instructions, some of the better of which relies on psycholinguistic experimentation to establish that a given instruction is confusing or gives the wrong result. See for example Solan's "Refocusing the burden of proof.." (and references therein) that addresses the problem of the "beyond a reasonable doubt" instruction, which has the unintended consequence of implying that the defense has an obligation to create a doubt (which is not the case, and allows conviction if there is the weakest imaginable evidence which hasn't been refuted). But who gets to decide what the improved instructions should say? The instructions have to correctly state what the law holds (where "the law" means not just statutes, but the trillions of relevant court decisions and applicable regulations). Thus there is massive inertia, and improved jury instructions will not come about quickly.
I think you misunderstand some of the relationships between laws, decisions, and justifications, and you're conflating two separate areas of jurisprudence. The linked real-world example you provide is happening in the employment context, but also in a government context (since it is a public school). But all the examples in your list have nothing to do with employment law and would be purely statutory/regulatory prohibitions. I will attempt to answer broadly enough to cover both domains. Laws and regulations can be challenged as discriminatory The things you have listed under &quot;decency law&quot; would be criminal or regulatory matters. A preliminary question would be whether the laws as written even capture the behaviours you've described. To the extent that they result in discrimination, the laws could be challenged as breaches of s. 15 (right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There may be other Charter arguments too, if the laws affect expression or life, liberty, or the security of the person. (Public decency / nudity laws are more frequently challenged on grounds of free expression.) Decisions of school boards are subject to the Charter The Charter almost certainly applies to decisions of public school boards and schools. See Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario v. York Region District School Board, 2022 ONCA 476, paras. 39-41. These decisions could be challenged by judicial review (i.e. court review of an administrative decision-maker's decisions) and would be analyzed for reasonableness, including whether the decision strikes a proportionate balance between the Charter right and the statutory objectives (Doré v. Barreau du Québec, 2012 SCC 12). Even if there is an infringement, the government gets a chance to justify it If you're looking for some sort of a &quot;line&quot; it is found in the justification or reasonableness analysis. Where a law or regulation is challenged, and if a breach of s. 15 is established, then the onus is on the government to justify the breach as a reasonable limit as allowed by s. 1 of the Charter. This will depend on the importance of the government objective, whether there is a rational connection between the objective and the law, whether the law is minimally impairing, and whether the impact on the claimant is proportional to the salutary effects of the law. When a court reviews an administrative decision for reasonableness, it is &quot;engaged in balancing somewhat different but related considerations, namely, has the decision-maker disproportionately, and therefore unreasonably, limited a Charter right. In both cases, we are looking for whether there is an appropriate balance between rights and objectives, and the purpose of both exercises is to ensure that the rights at issue are not unreasonably limited&quot; (Doré, para. 6). In each of your examples, the judgments would be highly fact-based and it is fruitless to speculate about what the evidence might show. Relevance of association with minors You ask whether it would matter &quot;if the person in question was primarily associating with minors.&quot; This likely would not matter if a law was challenged, because such challenges are about the validity of the law, not the factors that might render its applicability to a particular person to be more or less justified. But if the law itself had the purpose of protecting children, or if the law itself was targetted solely at those associating with minors or those in positions of authority over minors, this would be a factor weighing in favour of justification of the infringing law (Irwin Toy, R. v. Sharpe). Whether the person in question was primarily associating with minors would matter in the context of an administrative decision, because these decisions are case-specific. Some anti-discrimination statutes provide more protections Ontario's Human Rights Code potentially contains even further protections. Section 5 says that every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to employment without discrimination because of sex, gender identity, gender expression, and other enumerated factors. Section 24 provides for exceptions to that right in educational settings (and some others) where what would otherwise be discrimination is actually a bona fide qualification of the employment and if it cannot be accommodated without undue hardship on the employer. These judgments are also highly fact-based and it would be fruitless to speculate about what the evidence might show.
I haven't found any cases where this defence has worked. I strongly suspect that that's because it never has. Every piece of advice I've read on this unsurprisingly suggests you'd be a fool to attempt to rely on this defence in court, including some cases in which defendants have attempted to rely on it and have failed. There are a couple of Freedom of Information requests to the government which state very clearly that it won't work: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/statute_law_4 https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/consent_of_the_governed The last link is particularly clear on the matter: every citizen of the UK tacitly consents to be governed, according to Blackstone. And this one makes it even clearer: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/18097/response/56511/attach/html/3/TO%20255452%20TO09%205866.doc.html Under the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty, Acts of Parliament override common law. So it simply wouldn't be possible to argue that you choose to live under the common law alone; no court in the land would allow it, as it's a cornerstone of our legal system that Parliament is sovereign, and therefore that statutes enacted by Parliament will 'trump' the common law. Parliament derives its sovereignty from the fact that the current government is elected and therefore represents the citizens of the UK, and for this reason, Acts of Parliament take priority over case law. On that basis, it wouldn't be possible for a citizen to argue that they choose not to abide by statute: their consent is tacitly assumed. Based on all the above, then, I would say no: the 'common law' defence will never hold water if relied on in court.
Nowhere Collectively The US doesn't know the number of laws on all the federal, state, and city books. Often the lowest level of laws and ordinances are only in a city database, and sometimes not on the internet. As a result, there is already an impossibility to get all the laws in the US in one database - and there are even countries that have not taken any steps to make their laws accessible on the internet at all. For example North Korean Law. This is compounded by different entities proclaiming their laws and regulations in only their own language and on different proclamation platforms. Where available at all, the countries have country-wide laws and ordinances on their own dedicated websites. But again, federalism for the win: there will be different proclamation platforms for lower levels of legislation. For example germany has its justice department host https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ which hosts all federal german laws. Schleswig Holstein hosts their state-level laws in corporation with the service Juris on https://www.gesetze-rechtsprechung.sh.juris.de/jportal/portal/page/bsshoprod.psml and the town of Kiel has all of its ordinances and special orders on https://www.kiel.de/de/politik_verwaltung/ortsrecht_bekanntmachungen/index.php Why a conglomerate is a bad idea Now, making a conglomerate of all the laws is actually a bad idea for several reasons: Updates. The different entities that are in making regulations with the force of law only update their official proclamation site. Often, such changes are not announced too loudly for the lowest levels, and with the number of cities in a single federal state, it's near impossible to keep the database up to date on a complete level. This is why different databases usually only scrape the federal levels. Scraping will break quickly. Each of the websites I pointed to in Germany has a different system setup, making scraping these websites for the relevant information basically useless. Compounding that, City ordinance pages are redesigned at a somewhat elevated pace, resulting in the scraping of these pages to break quickly, even if you manage to set it up. Citability. In a court of law, only the official text is relevant. If an update is missed, then the whole text is useless - you'll have to look up the actual, currently in-force version of the law or ordinance, so the conglomerate is not helping. You want a ginormous database. In some countries, judgments also make law as precedent. So you want every judgment in your database. Which quickly runs into a different problem: The US alone generates millions per day.
what is the state of the law with the valid parts of Bill B? If by "valid" you mean the sections which are unrelated to Bill/Law A, then they retain their status just as if the court had not stricken the unrelated legislation. For instance, see *Loeb v. Columbia Township Trustess, 179 US 472, 490 (1900) regarding invalid sections: "One part may stand, while another will fall, unless the two are so connected, or dependent on each other in subject matter, meaning or purpose, that the good cannot remain without the bad". This is also known as the doctrine of elision. See State v. Tester, 879 S.W.2d 823, 830 (1994). The doctrine is premised on "there [being] enough of the act for a complete law capable of enforcement and fairly answering the object of its passage" coupled with an indication that the legislative intent is "to have the valid parts of the statute enforced if some other portion of the statute has been declared unconstitutional". One way to evidence the latter is by including a severability clause in the statute, Id. Similarly, see Gannon v. State, 372 P.3d 1181, 1203 (2016), and Small v. Sun Oil Company, 222 So.2d 196, 199 (1969). You did not specify the jurisdiction you have in mind. Regardless, that jurisdiction is very unlikely to take a materially different approach to address this issue.
Amendments to the US Constitution are part of the US Constitution, and this includes the so-called Bill of Rights. The doctrine of applying parts of the US Constitution to states, known as incorporation, comes from the 14th amendment: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. The scope of the doctrine of incorporation is logically limited to amendments because the original articles of the constitution state how the federal government is run, and does not guarantee any rights or privileges to individuals. Amendments 1,2,4,8 are fully incorporated against states, 5 and 6 are partially incorporated, third and 7th are not incorporated, and for 9th and 10th there is no ruling. This arrangement derives from decisions by the Supreme Court, interpreting the 14th Amendment and the concept of &quot;due process&quot;. If a state were to passe a law forbidding criticism of the governor (violating the First Amendment), an individual could sue to have the law found unconstitutional. Because, under the 14th Amendment, &quot;The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article&quot;, Congress can and has passed a law prohibiting violation of civil rights: 42 USC 1983. Since the state in this hypothetical scenario has violated federal law, the federal government (Dept. of Justice) has standing to sue the state for violating federal law.
The main impediment is identifying exactly what "a law" is. When people talk (casually) about "the law", that can refer to statutes enacted by Congress, regulations set forth by administrative agencies to articulate specifics of those statutes, and Supreme Court rulings as to what "the law" is or says. The canonical example of "a law" is a statute passed by Congress. Under that understanding, you could point to the US Code and ask the question "how many", though you may have to also subtract things ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS (they aren't removed from The Code, unless actually repealed by Congress). In the US code, there isn't an enumerable element "a law". Title 17 pertains to copyright; Title 18 pertains to crime. There isn't just one law about crime and one law about copyright. There are 12 chapters in Title 17; Chapter 1 has a couple dozen sections. Sections can get fairly minutely subdivided: there is no clear point at which you can say "this is one law, this is another". However, it is legally irrelevant how many there are – unless Congress passes a law that counts likes ("must repeal two laws for every new one passed"). The immediate product of congressional enactments is the US Code; the immediate product of administrative rule-making is the Code of Federal Regulations. Supreme Court decisions are also published in United States Reports, though I don't if there is an exhaustive online compendium of all rulings. Also note that things passed by Congress are "Laws" (some public, some private). Things in the US Code originate in such acts of Congree, but not every act of Congress affects the US Code, for example PL 118-81. When new subject matter is first introduced it is usually entirely contained in the corresponding law passed, but subsequently it can be amended, and an amendment to copyright law could be snuck into a bill generally about terrorism. I think that the stuff in the US Code corresponds to what most people think "a law" is, but it's better to look at the US Code as a single thing – "the law" – rather than try to count individual laws. If you are armed with access to all of these resources, you would also need to know where to find relevant law. Once you find all of the applicable text, you simply apply general legal principles to reach a conclusion, then hire a lawyer to determine where you went wrong, then hire another lawyer to determine where he went wrong. At least in difficult cases. Fortunately, although enacted bills often glue stuff together in crazy ways, when it is assembled into the US Code, it is organized more sensibly. Still, not all crimes are defined in title 18 (there 1re 52 other titles to search to find crimes).