alt Hacker NewsIs this something that cities can really enforce? Like I get that NYC is a bit of an exception but let's say a 5 person town in Wyoming decides that they want to make this practice illegal and they all vote to do so. It's not clear to me that would mean anything at all.
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Your question answers exactly how enforceable it is. It’s directly linked to your population size and how much it can hurt the wallet of the company.
Edit: but also, who cares? Literally no solution to anything on earth works for EVERYONE
NYC has ~2% of the US population, and it’s a relatively wealthy slice compared to the mean. NYC has roughly 13x as many people as the entire state of Wyoming. I could see a company writing off Wyoming entirely (not likely, but possible) but not NYC.
States like CA, FL, NY, and TX can pass state laws that create defacto national regulations through sheer size, but smaller than that and you’ll have trouble.
This is one way how "states rights" types of policies will favor large corporations at our expense. We need strong advocates for regular people at the highest level of law/enforcement. Having advocates at all levels is good, of course.
It ultimately depends on if there is overriding state or federal law. But yeah, it's something a city can enforce.
A small town in Wyoming could do the same and could sue (and probably win) against businesses that do business in that small town and break the law. What most likely happens in that case is that small Wyoming town ends up blacklisted by that business.