Sunday, October 12, 2003

Library rule requiring patrons to wear shoes pass constitutional muster

In Neinast v. Board of Trustees of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, the Sixth Circuit in an opinion by Judge Julia Smith Gibbons decided that the plaintiff, who "was asked to leave the Library for failure to comply with the Library’s requirement that patrons wear shoes while on its premises," had not suffered any violation of his constitutional rights, holding that "[t]he Library regulation survives rational basis review because the regulation provides a rational means to further the legitimate government interests of protecting public health and safety and protecting the Library’s economic well-being by seeking to prevent tort claims brought by library patrons who were injured because they were barefoot."

As Sneaking Suspicions points out here, however, who would have thought that what might you walk on around a library would be so nasty?

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