Bees are legally fish in California, court rules | Hacker News Reader

Bees are legally fish in California, court rules

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24 pointsprostoalex12 comments

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31596034

If I was a bee I'd get out of California - this is discrimination!

Really tho this is just a bad headline (well it worked I read it so maybe not that bad). It's saying that a law made about fish is actually about invertebrates and that includes bees. They are not explicitly classifying bees as fish.

The opinion is very clearly written and lays out why bees can be protected under the law in question. This is a passage from the supporting evidence section:

"""In 1969, the Legislature amended section 45 via Senate Bill No. 858 (1969 Reg. Sess.) (Senate Bill 858) to add invertebrates and amphibia to the definition of fish. (Stats. 1969, ch. 689, § 1.) Section 45 has been amended only once since 1969 -- in 2015 (effective January 1, 2016), when the Legislature made nonsubstantive stylistic changes, modifying the definition to read “ ‘[f]ish’ means a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.” """

[1] https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/C093542.PDF

This is just a poorly reasoned decision. The statutory definition of “fish” is as follows:

> ‘[f]ish’ means a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.” (Stats. 2015, ch. 154, § 5.)

Ordinarily, you read statutory terms in a list in the context, including in the context of the other terms. See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/ejusdem_generis

> Ejusdem generis (ee-joose-dem gen-ris) is a Latin phrase that means “of the same kind.” The statutory and constitutional construction principle of “ejusdem generis” states that where general words or phrases follow a number of specific words or phrases, the general words are specifically construed as limited and apply only to persons or things of the same kind or class as those expressly mentioned. For example, if a law refers to automobiles, trucks, tractors, motorcycles, and other motor-powered vehicles, a court might use ejusdem generis to hold that such vehicles would not include airplanes, because the list included only land-based transportation.

While “invertebrate” can be a more general term, in the surrounding context it’s clearly meant to refer to marine invertebrates, not invertebrates in general.

The decision [1] includes the court's full justification for setting aside ejusdem generis, starting at the bottom of page 20.

As I understand it: The short answer is the legislature changed the statutory definition on more than one occasion where it can be shown they were aware of the broader interpretation of that clause being in use and took no action to narrow it. This, according to the decision, establishes legislative intent for the broad interpretation, which supersedes ejusdem generis.

[1] https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/C093542.PDF

Read the legislative history discussion at 10-13. The DNR expressly asked the Legislature to add “invertebrates.” The legislature included it in a draft bill, but deleted that language in the final bill. The legislative history seems to confirm that invertebrates are excluded.

Also whales were fish:

http://www.lateralmag.com/articles/issue-29/when-whales-were...

Does this actually hold merit?

Some countries gave legal entity/personhood status to rivers and gave legal rights to curb water pollution. Not much has happened from those declaration. I wonder if these kind public awareness verdicts from courts would have any kind of significant impact.

The topline of the decision is about one page of doublespaced text and is quite readable: https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/C093542.PDF

The short answer is that the headline is rubbish. A law originally covering only fish was amended by the legislature to expand what it covered by redefining the meaning of "fish" in the rest of the statute, which is simpler than amending each mention of "fish" to a big long list.

One of the categories in that list was "invertebrates", and this court ruling simply found that non-aquatic invertebrates are included, and therefore bees are included.

But it gets more clicks to say "bees are now legally fish in california"

This is my problem with precedence law - it is a shortcut that works most of the time but sometimes it enshrines 52 years of ongoing stupidity.

governments are stupid and insects are certainly invertebrates

The law was amended to include invertebrates anywhere the term fish was used.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds as people go lobster/crab fishing so there is a fair amount of overlap when someone is talking about fisherman. Starfish, jellyfish, etc again blur the line linguistically.

But the fast they used invertebrates in the definition rather than aquatic invertebrates means it also covers non aquatic invertebrates.

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