The Legal Insurrection team often reports on California, the petri dish for insane progressive policies. Over the past few weeks, we have written that:
The stories about California’s decline are climbing; there will be many more in 2024. There are many reasons why I can forecast the failure, but chief among those reasons is the political class in Sacramento.
Its legislature crafted a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom requiring stores to create gender-neutral sections for children or face a penalty of up to $500.
In 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation, titled Assembly Bill No. 1084, which will require some retail stores in the state to have a gender-neutral section for children “regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys.”The bill is set to go into effect on January 1, 2024, and states that stores failing to comply will be “liable for a civil penalty not to exceed $250 for a first violation or $500 for a subsequent violation, as provided.”The legislation applies to “a retail department store that is physically located in California that has a total of 500 or more employees across all California retail department store locations that sells childcare items or toys.”
This insanity of this law is such that the Editorial Board of the New York Post offered its assessment:
Aside from the fact that nothing now stops any parent from buying any kid any toy (in the family price range) he or she wants.Indeed, thanks to online retail, no parent ever has to set foot in a toy store.The fact is, gendered marketing for toys seems to bother whiny adults in deep-blue states far more than it does actual kids.Yes, little girls generally like to play with dolls and such, and little boys generally like to play with trucks and toy guns. Yet plenty of kids march to the beat of their own drums; all their needs are easily met thanks to the wonders of market capitalism.And plenty of toys are already as gender-neutral as it gets.
The sentiment was echoed by many on social media:
According to the bill, the age range of the ‘children’ that the legislation refers to is 12 years of age and under.
According to the bill, ‘childcare items’ refer to any product that is designed to facilitate sleep, feeding children, relaxation, or ‘to help children with sucking or teething’….’Toys’ were defined as a product designed or intended to be used by children by the manufacturer.Californian Democratic Congressman Evan Low backed the bill to the Associated Press’We need to stop stigmatizing what’s acceptable for certain genders and just let kids be kids,’ he said.
This has got to be the single most useless piece of legislation ever created in this history of legislation, as my colleague, Fuzzy Slippers, noted in 2021.
Despite decades of leftist social engineering, it turns out that—generally speaking—little girls most enjoy playing with dolls, while little boys most enjoy playing with toy trucks. Moreover, according to a recent study, this tendency to prefer toys associated with “traditional gender roles” has remained steady for 50 years.
I dread 2024, with its slew of new laws and rules created by Sacramento’s political class.
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