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Comment by pvg | Hacker News Reader

Not letting the health inspector in your restaurant is not exercising your right to refuse service.

But if the health inspector never says he's the health inspector, but you have a suspicion he might be, and doesn't say they are when you refuse service, could you still refuse service?

Could HN get in trouble for hellbanning/shadowbanning the wrong people too?

I think there's a great deal of mental fun to be had thinking about formal and informal social rules as some sort of underhanded C contest. But you can't lose sight of the fact it's not how such rules are generally applied in reality. The intent of the rule and the intent of the potential rule-breaker matter a lot.

This. I've found discussing law with programmers a frustrating experience more often than not. Yes, I'm impressed that your pedantic mind has found all the logical and definitional loopholes, but now back to the real world, where that's just not going to fly with a judge or in any other context where high-level intent and psychological deliberation is considered.

> But if the health inspector never says he's the health inspector

If you look up his Facebook profile, find out that he's a health inspector, and deny him on the basis that he is a health inspector, what then?

Of course not; surely it is a condition of your food service license to allow inspectors on premises, so you'll lose it if you don't let them in (I doubt you'll get charged with a federal crime for it though). I don't see much in common with the Uber situation though.

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