A tiny victory in the Nevada Legislative session
Kudos to the Nevada Legislature and Gov. Brian Sandoval for approving Senate Bill 506, which erases a Cold War-era law that allowed employers to fire workers suspected of being communists.
Nevada is a right-to-work state, where employees can be hired and fired at will. The anti-communist law was redundant and hadn’t been enforced for at least 40 years, when the federal Subversive Activity Control Board was abolished.
Every regular session, legislative lawyers identify a handful of obsolete laws that no longer serve any purpose. More lawmakers should join the cause of cutting back the more than 700 chapters of the Nevada Revised Statutes, and seriously examine not only archaic and silly laws, but ineffective and destructive statutes as well.
We’ve long advocated a law that requires legislators to repeal two statutes for every new one they pass. Under such a requirement, you can bet our politicians would target that law for repeal first. One of the only certainties of each legislative session is the growth of law books and the new intrusions they cause. More than 1,000 bills were considered this year in Carson City.
But even tiny victories are worth noting. One less law on the books is a good thing. In 2015, let’s get rid of 500 more.
