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Comment by ggreer | Hacker News Reader

I dislike this restriction, but it's hard to see how it's unconstitutional. Cities often exclude non-residents from many resources. It's quite common for parking permits, libraries, and schools to be exclusively for residents. The main reason for this is that residents pay taxes and non-residents don't. If you give non-residents the same privileges as residents, it incentivizes free riding. People would be encouraged to live in a place with lower taxes while taking advantage of the resources and services of a nearby city.

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It's unconstitutional because disparate impact is the new commerce clause. Any democratic outcome you don't like, just run a calculation which will as a law of nature show that it disparately impacts some protected class, and file a lawsuit.

Private property rights have a disparate impact, and the endgame is to come after that. Take Harvard's going after final clubs; this is what they want for America.

Are you saying that the disparate impact here is a statistical outlier from p-hacking, and not an outcome of historic policies excluding certain races?

The disparate impact is surely an outcome of historic policies of racial exclusion. But equally surely, it's not unconstitutional in general for Palo Alto to have nice things because of nasty policies they had in the past. So there has to be some middle ground.

Does the park cease to be nice if non-residents are allowed into it? Should a city be able to decide whether non-residents can use its sidewalks, in order to make the city "nice"?

>Does the park cease to be nice if non-residents are allowed into it?

Yes, if there are too many of them and they act irresponsibly.

>Should a city be able to decide whether non-residents can use its sidewalks, in order to make the city "nice"?

Yes

Are you willing to pay a fee to enter such a city, to offset the costs of your visit?

As far as I'm aware, you can certainly enter a library outside of your city of residence and read the books there. You just can't borrow them out, presumably because if you then stole said book, they wouldn't be able to fine you.

Why would they be any less able to fine you than your local library? They would still collect your personal information to set up a library card.

True! In fact, I now saw that others have pointed out that it's even possible to buy library cards as a non-resident in various places.

> As far as I'm aware, you can certainly enter a library outside of your city of residence and read the books there. You just can't borrow them out, presumably because if you then stole said book, they wouldn't be able to fine you.

I've had many public library cards for libraries outside of my local city or county system; as long as you can document who you are and where you live so they can come after you at need, at least in CA as a CA resident, I've never has a problem.

> it's common for parking permits, libraries, and schools to be exclusively for residents

It's absolutely not common for libraries or schools to restrict _access_ to non-residents. Public libraries don't check ID at the door. School grounds have visitor access protocols these days, but those protocols have nothing to do with residency of the visitor. School _studentship_, library _borrowing_, and roadside parking are constrained finite resources and therefore extremely different from walking across a threshold, which is neither finite nor constrained.

Really, this is a case of the residents of Palo Alto free riding on the surrounding cities. All other public parks in the region (including those maintained by Mountain View, Redwood City, San Francisco, etc.) are open to all, while Palo Alto restricts this park. And this is ignoring the racist history of the restriction.

I get your point, but your statement isn't 100% accurate. Many parks in the region charge fees for non-residents. This solves the free rider problem.

That said: I would be happy if surrounding cities banned Palo Alto residents from their parks until the city of Palo Alto changed their rules.

Are you talking about parking fees? That's pretty different from literally making it a crime for non-residents to be there.

Some cities have neighborhoods where only residents can park on the street. If you park your car in parts of Berkeley[1] or SF[2] and you don't have a permit, you can be ticketed. They can also tow your vehicle, though I'm sure that almost never happens in practice.

1. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/rpp/

2. https://www.sfmta.com/permits/residential-parking-permits-rp...

What does have to do with Palo Alto criminalizing non-residents using a city park?

it's an example of restricting access to public property that is generally accepted.

If the park is routinely used for presentations and events, there's case law that says that residents-only restrictions infringe the First Amendment. Public parks are one of the archetypical "public fora" considered in constitutional law.

I think the key difference in all these examples you can still access all these services as a non-resident through a higher price. This effectively blocks out non-residents. The other question is can they prove that they never used state or federal funds for upkeep or the salary of that ranger?

Really easy to see how it can be unconstitutional if it's motivated by racial bias which is exactly what the ACLU is arguing.

I fail to see how this would apply to a public park. Certainly it would cost much more money to enforce the "resident only" rules, with security guards, cameras, identification check-points on the roads.

Hard to imagine how "free riding" a public park would work

> Hard to imagine how "free riding" a public park would work

Parks require upkeep. Parking lots and trails must be maintained. Litter must be picked up. Police are needed to evict anyone camping (you'd be surprised how often this happens in California). If you're a resident, your taxes pay for that upkeep. If you're a non-resident, you're free riding.

Banning non-residents is a dick move, but it's unclear how it's unconstitutional. Honestly, I think usage fees would benefit both sides. Non-residents could enjoy the park, and the city wouldn't have to worry about a potential burden on their budget.

> your taxes pay for that upkeep. If you're a non-resident, you're free riding

How about the woman who owns the stationary shop mentioned in the article? Her business pays taxes to Palo Alto, but she can't use the park because she doesn't live there.

Sadly that's true of business owners pretty much everywhere. Corporations can have many different ownership structures, so it's very difficult to determine who qualifies as an "owner" or not. To use a ridiculous example: I own stock in Berkshire Hathaway. I'm sure there's a GEICO office or some other Berkshire Hathaway property in Palo Alto. Does that mean I should have access to the park under the current rules? Probably not. It's hard to draw a bright line when it comes to admitting people based on business ownership. Even in the case that the business is a sole proprietorship, how does one prove both ownership and the business address? You'd need to bring a ream of documents. Residency is easier to check and simpler to judge, since it just requires showing ID.

Here's another example: Non-resident immigrants can found companies in the US and pay taxes to the US government, but many of them can't even enter the country.

Again, I think this law is stupid and I'd love to see the city of Palo Alto change it. But I don't see how it's unconstitutional. As history has shown us, the US Constitution allows legislators to pass many, many stupid laws.

You don't need a "ream of documents" to prove you own a business as a sole proprietor. Off the top of my head, a copy of the lease for the property, or the title record if they own the property, along with a copy of their business license and some form of personal identification should be enough. Unless commercial leases are now routinely multiple hundreds of pages, that looks to me like it should come in at well under 20 pages, and possibly less than 5. All of these documents should be easily, if not instantly accessible to any business owner.

Surely having a full time guard and ID checkpoints would make it more expensive for everyone involved. If they don’t like paying the additional taxes they can vote or move.

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