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Judge Blocks California Law Limiting Publication of Actor's Ages (politico.com)

mi writes: IMDb has a reason to rejoice. Politico reports: "A federal judge has barred the State of California from enforcing a new law limiting online publication of actors' ages. Acting in a case brought by online movie information website IMDb, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria ruled Wednesday that the California law likely violates the First Amendment and appears poorly tailored to proponents' stated goal of preventing age discrimination in Hollywood. The judge expressed deep skepticism that the law, which he said appeared to apply only to IMDb, would have any effect on discrimination. The judge rejected the state's arguments that the law was a regulation of commercial speech, finding that IMDb was acting as a publisher in posting the birthday and age information online." "It's not clear how preventing one mere website from publishing age information could meaningfully combat discrimination at all. And even if restricting publication on this one website could confer some marginal anti-discrimination benefit, there are likely more direct, more effective, and less speech-restrictive ways of achieving the same end," Chhabria wrote in a three-page order.

2 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Shouldn't age descrimination be allowed? by DonaId+Trump · · Score: 5, Funny

    He doesn't even seem to be able to be consistent in long sentences.

    What are you talking about? Look, having nuclear - my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart - you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world - it's true! - but when you're a conservative Republican they try - oh, do they do a number - that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune - you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged - but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me - it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right - who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners - now it used to be three, now it's four - but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years - but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

  2. Re: Cool? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ryan Fenton