dagny-hashtaggart:

Hmm. Interesting question.

A lot of that would come down to whether force sensitive people were considered a protected class. There’s nothing in the Civil Rights Act that would specifically protect people from discrimination on the basis of force sensitivity (it has certain features of both race and religion, but probably not enough to qualify as either in legal terms), but in a world in which the force was known to be a thing when the act was passed, it might have been. Probably the best argument for them would be the precedent from Carolene Products, which states that the court will apply heightened scrutiny to laws concerning “discrete and insular minorities.” “Insular” here means essentially that there are substantial or insurmountable barriers to changing one’s status on that axis: race is a clear example, religion is a bit more mixed but typically still counts, profession clearly doesn’t qualify. In that respect, force sensitive people clearly do qualify (assuming that it’s genetic or otherwise innate, as in Star Wars).

So, such a law would already be questionable on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. The other major objection I can see is Fourth Amendment search and seizure doctrine. Bugs swarming an individual sounds pretty damn invasive and contrary to “the right of the people to be secure in their persons” in both principle and precedent. I’m not all that up on profiling law, but there are limits on suspicionless searches more generally: it was that, for instance, that wound up dooming the controversial Florida law mandating drug tests for welfare recipients.

To keep a law from being struck down on those grounds, and particularly given the minority interest at stake, the government would need to demonstrate that the law served a compelling state interest, and did so in a manner that restricted rights and liberties as little as possible while still serving that interest. To take the drug test example above: courts have ruled that mandatory suspicionless drug tests are permissible for city bus drivers, because driving a bus while under the influence would create the potential for far greater harm than an addict receiving food stamps. So the first question would be how much danger force-using criminals created. On that count I could see the government having a pretty strong argument: telekinesis, mind control, and the ability to kill a person without detectable weapons all have strong criminal potential, and I could see a crackdown happening if a force user assassinated a major public figure, for instance. It seems like the bug solution would have a hard time with the least restrictive means test, though, given both how invasive it is, and the fact that it identifies force sensitive individuals rather than force users specifically, let alone force users who have recently used the force to commit crimes or have access to powers of particular concern.

In sum, I could see it being used in areas with substantial security (courthouses, military and police offices, etc.), but I don’t think courts would take kindly to it being deployed in most public spaces.

 

blastfarmer:

Building from this, there are so many different and weird directions a writer could take this Force-bugs!USA in.

A selection of news ledes:

The FBI violated the Fourth Amendment by planting Force-bee hives near the entrance of a county courthouse in the Bay Area, a federal judge has ruled. 

Police officers deployed Force bees after a recent spate of Force choking, arrested residents of swarmed houses, and searched the premises. Despite obtaining a warrant for the search that resulted in the arrest and conviction of choker Anakin Skywalker, Judge Kenobi has thrown out the conviction as a result of an overly-broad search warrant.

Force bees from hives known to belong to out-of-state Drug Enforcement Agency hives were seen by National Lawyers Guild observers during recent protests in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Several alleged Force-sensitives were arrested by police during the protests after bees swarmed the protesters.

YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHICH CELEBRITIES ARE FORCE-SENSITIVE! We went undercover with a swarm of bees to find out.

A honeybee farmer was attacked today in an apparent case of mistaken identity, after Force bees swarmed several houses in northern Maine.

Leading chemical research and development company Nüdrugs is proud to announce Force Off™, a line of Force bee repellants. The product is already in deployment with military and government customers, and is now being release on the open market for family and household use.

The Force Off brand of Force bee repellants contain synthetic pheromones that differ per batch, and appear designed to allow tracking of users, a Cornell research team announced Tuesday.

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Tags:

#can’t vouch for the accuracy of the legal stuff but this is entertaining #Star Wars