Should the The Grandfather Clause be done away with?

[Carsman]

The Grandfather Clause (back door weasel legal term) allows places and or conditions although extremely unsafe to human life to continue operating outside of life saving existing safety regulations.


Are you in favor of it, and have you ever used it, and if so for what purpose?

[HairOfTheDog]

The intent behind the creation of the legal Grandfather Clause was shameful. When black citizens got the right to vote, new laws requiring a fee, a tax, and a literacy test were invoked by some southern states to suppress that voter right. Since there were also plenty of broke and illiterate white citizens, those southern states waived the testing requirements for veterans and citizens whose grandfathers had the right to vote before the Civil War -- which excluded almost all black citizens and exempted a good portion of white citizens in those states.

That voter suppression was eventually ruled unconstitutional, but the term lived on and is now applied to measures that exempt people and businesses (at least in the short term) from new regulations and laws.

I'm neutral on the issues of grandfather clauses; depends on the issue. For the most part, I think they're often necessary from a logistical, administrative, and political perspective.

[HairOfTheDog]

When Bill Clinton signed the Federal Assault Weapons ban back in 86, for example, citizens already in possession of the newly banned firearms were allowed to keep them. They were not required to turn them in and could not be legally penalized for possessing them. However, those weapons could no longer be legally purchased. That grandfathering compromise made sense to me, I think it would have been a potentially dangerous and costly shitstorm if the government had tried to confiscate the effected firearms from existing owners.

I've benefited from grandfather clauses in San Francisco business regulations. Some new regulations apply immediately to new businesses, but give existing businesses operating under previous regulations a waiver for some period so we have time to make the required changes without halting business activity.

I think I also benefited from a grandfather clause when new emission regulations were passed on vehicles. If I recall correctly, I wasn't required to get a smog check on my 69 Oldsmobile for a year or two after the new regulations were put in place.

[Duchess]

I'm grandfathered into my unlimited data also into a couple hundred texts for a pittance.

I don't support nor agree with all the hoops some people are made to jump through in order to vote. If I were black and treated like what I hear about, I'd have a crappy attitude too. I'm more than a little sick of this white privilege bullshit.

[Maggot]

I put a fence up a few years ago where the fence that was there was getting junky. If it wasn't grandfathered in I would have had to get a building permit to put up a new one. The only real reason people have to get a building permit is so your house can be assessed into a higher tax bracket.

[BigMark]

Some cities require a survey as well.