While the constitutionality of the Safety in Selegania Act was a fleeting curiosity in the mind of Righty Rick and was not even a blip on the map of Knuckles’ mind, it was of utmost importance to Senator Megders, perhaps better known to the reader by now as Squirrelly Eddie.
In fact, Senator Megders had stormed out of the senate like a tornado, the angry glare in his eye being as sufficient to clear a pathway as any battering ram, and thundered off to his private law office. Unlike many of the senators, who made the vast majority of their yearly income off of selling their votes, Senator Megders did actual work for a living, specializing in family law and in criminal law cases with constitutional issues.
He wanted a plaintiff, and he wanted one fast because he was going to be sure that he was representing the first person to sue the government over the constitutionality of SISA—something he had already renamed in his own mind as HISA—the Hypocrisy in Selegania Act. He would have marched over to one of the stores right now that had—at least up until now—carried large quantities of Smokeless Green, insisted on buying some, and then when he was told by the merchant that he could not because of the illegality of Smokeless Green he would sue and seek an injunction against enforcement of the law due to its unconstitutionality.
The problem, however, was that he qualified as a gentleman under SISA due to the size of his estate. His income also almost made him qualify, though it was a bit shy of the $200,000 cutoff amount for annual income. Thus, if the merchant refused to sell it to him, he technically couldn’t sue for an injunction of the enforcement of the law. He would lack standing. That was because the law would not forbid the merchant from selling it to a gentleman . . . that is, unless the merchant were not a gentleman.
But he knew that a claim like that would have less chance of being heard. The state would likely move for summary judgment, asserting that, even if the law were unconstitutional as applied to non-gentlemen, Senator Megders was a gentleman, could lawfully purchase Smokeless Green from another gentleman, and thus was not being injured by the law even if it were unconstitutional, and thus he had no standing. He could of course counter that by pointing out that by preventing non-gentlemen from possessing or selling it the only way a gentleman could get Smokeless Green lawfully under SISA was if another gentleman sold it to him, and since few retailers were wealthy enough to qualify as “gentlemen” under the Act, the law had the practical effect of making Smokeless Green unavailable to gentlemen, of whose class he was a member and had thus suffered injury.
But this was too wobbly a bridge for him to want to traverse while bringing about the destruction of SISA and making a failure out of that arrogant pest—Senator Hutherton. No, he needed a rock-solid plaintiff. Unfortunately, this meant someone criminally charged with violation of SISA. That would be at least a month before it could even theoretically be possible, and even then he wasn’t sure if it would be feasible.
After all, he had no doubt stores would be clearing their shelves of the substance as soon as they got word of SISA. Thus, there was no way he would have a retailer client on his hands or a client that purchased or attempted to purchase from a retailer. No, he felt certain that from this day forward Smokeless Green was going to become a hot contraband item the likes of which Selegania had never seen. He had seen the change in the city since its mysterious arrival (something he found curiously was rarely the subject of inquiry): taverns selling it had been full almost every single night, something that usually only happened during holidays.
He felt there was no way Smokeless Green was going to quietly disappear. As he entered his office, sat back in his leather chair, and crossed his arms, the certain, albeit unpleasant, realization came to him that there was nothing he could do but wait until a client walked into his law office having been arrested for use, possession, or sale of Smokeless Green.
He frowned and said out loud, “This isn’t over yet, Hutherton.”