Texans, please, just draw the curtains!

In the tort reform debate, we hear a lot of rhetoric about unmeritorious and unnecessary litigation clogging up the courts. I wish we could discuss the real problem, in my opinion: governments who feel the need to hash out the same issue repeatedly.

Back in 2003, in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, the United States Supreme Court struck down a Texas law against consensual gay sex as being unconstitutional. Texans, never a group to back down from a fight, then passed a law banning the sale sex toys (even for the heterosexually married). This law was also appealed. In the case of Reliable Consultants Inc. v. Earle, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals relied on the Lawrence decision in their ruling:

"Just as in Lawrence, the state here wants to use its law to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct," the 5th Circuit majority wrote. "This case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct."

My point here is that the State of Texas in both cases felt the need to appeal these decisions to the higher courts. Legislators pass these laws because they are popular, even though they must know the laws are constitutionally unsound. If the legislators who sponsor these bills were personally liable for the court costs and expenses associated with the appeals, I believe they would consider more than their re-election when creating legislation. Just as we punish attorneys who pursue frivolous lawsuits or claims, perhaps we should consider a corresponding penalty for legislators passing frivolous laws. Now, that is a litigation-reform law I could get behind.