Bad Law Quotes

“mouthy farm equipment who could be raped, slaughtered, or used as beasts of burden as the white people who wrote the Constitution saw fit.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“The right to vote does not exist in the federal Constitution.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“The laws that I’ve highlighted here are causing social, racial, and gendered injustice as intended.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“Repealing bad laws doesn’t automatically fix the problems they’ve caused, but repealing them is the first step toward overcoming them.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“Redlining practices (from both the government and banks) were in effect until the 1970s. They restricted where Black people could live and incentivized white people to move to where Black people were legally prohibited from going.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“like the Home Owners Loan Act—to spur homeownership after the Great Depression.4 The government created an agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, to issue government-backed mortgages, but there was a catch: the government produced maps to indicate where mortgages were a “safe” investment and outlined in red places where government mortgage assistance should not be provided. All of the “red” communities were predominately Black, meaning Black people could not get a government loan to own property in their communities. And they couldn’t get a mortgage to live in white communities either because banks just wouldn’t lend to them.5”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“We live in a world saddled with the poor choices of our past, beset by those who want to perpetuate white supremacist policies into our future.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“America before 1965 wasn’t a democratic republic; it was a white ethnostate that held captives.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“Every single national law in this country was passed by a Christian legislature, signed by a Christian president, and reviewed by a Christian court. If this place doesn’t feel like a Christian theocracy to you, it’s probably because you’re Christian.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“All parents give up certain parental rights in order to have their children educated by the community. Most importantly, you give up the right to restrict your child’s knowledge to only what you know or to only what you believe to be true.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“Democrats are always looking for ways to sell out the voters who gave them power in order to appeal to the people who voted for the other guys.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“If I wrote “Watching the Mets at Citi Field, being necessary to forge happy father-son memories, the right of children to eat cotton candy and popcorn shall not be infringed,” Scalia would have my kids throwing plates of peas and carrots at me every dinnertime while they sucked down tubes of condensed sugar.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“In Australia, you get fined if you don’t register and fined if you don’t vote. . . . I’m not a fan of the fine, but I grudgingly respect it, in a “Mel Gibson is an insane crazy person but an entertaining actor and a fantastic storyteller” way.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law

“We live in the most violent wealthy country on earth not in spite of the law; we live in a first-person shooter video game because of the law.”
― Elie Mystal, Bad Law