Whenever I present General laws: Part 1:Title XV: Section102 to anyone at immigrant, social justice, or safe community/sanctuary city discussions, I routinely receive one of two responses.
In both cases the response is immediate which shows the person is not analyzing, but simply reacting, or they either do not understand the language or simply do not want to deal with it.
The first response I have gotten is that, because of the Civil War, all laws dealing with people before, during, and after their enslavement, or the reasons why it ended whether manumission, self- emancipation, freedom voluntarily granted by the master, or the war itself, are rendered moot and unnecessary, but, nowhere in the law is condition relative to slavery, race, or gender, a determining factor except when the white male is cited as the benchmark for rights.
The law clearly states,
All persons within the commonwealth, regardless of sex, race, color, creed or national origin, shall have, except as is otherwise provided or permitted by law, the same rights enjoyed by white male citizens.
It seems unreasonable to simply accept that with the change in the condition of one person or group of people that the condition of all people changed especially when slavery in Massachusetts ended in 1783 with the adoption of the Massachusetts State Constitution and this law was written in 1843, sixty years later.
The law is not limited in application to slaves or former slaves but to All persons within the commonwealth, and even then resident is not specifically defined so as to limit it to citizenship or property ownership. A person simply had to reside here.
The second dismissive response is that because the law is old, it has somehow been rescinded passively through the passage of time
I find this rather troubling as it too is not based on consideration or history.
The Massachusetts Blue Laws, thought by some to be so named because they appeared on blue paper in the law books to have them stand out, while the other belief is that the name is based on the term “bluenose,” meaning a rigidly moral person, or “blueblood”, banned such things as retail stores being open on Sundays with the exception of Pharmacies which in the past did not include the plethora of products they do today and were seen as necessary for people’s well being and not a luxury. These laws were the laws written by the Puritans based on their religious beliefs and practices and, then, simply grandfathered in when the colony became a state.
They remained applicable and enforced until 1982 when the Massachusetts Senate voted 19-9 on a roll call vote to remove the state’s “common day of rest law”, and the governor signed it.
The end of the Blue Laws was not passive because they were old, but active as it took a legislative vote to undo them.
They applied up to the time they were removed.
Why, then, would General laws: Part 1:Title XV: Section102 be simply rescinded because of its age and/or unrelated actions, events and additional laws applied to other matters without its being removed by a legislative act?
It certainly is younger than the Blue Laws were when they ceased to be.
A third response that is met, but not as often as the other two is to request that I email a copy to the person whose attention I brought the law to either by reading it openly at a meeting or showing it to them so they could take the time necessary to research it. This is usually met with no acknowledgement that they have received the relevant email, and silence to any follow-up inquiries about their receiving it or what they thought of it.
“Email me a copy” seems to be a dismissive dodge to be able to extricate someone from my questions and escape the topic.
Because Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a federal program, some believe that to not fully cooperate with it violates a federal law that supersedes the state law, while others believe, just as with individual state marijuana laws that make possession legal within a state provided the person does not violate the state’s restrictions on it, like no smoking while driving or inside buildings where cigarette smoking is banned, is still against federal law, such enforcement that ICE may call for is up to federal agencies and not local law enforcement.
And this idea would seem to be strengthened by local sheriff’s having to enter into a contract to participate and cooperate with ICE.
Just as with marijuana laws where states will not arrest a person in possession of marijuana so long as they use it within the parameters of the state law, while knowing full well that federal agencies can arrest for mere possession, the same should hold true of General laws: Part 1:Title XV: Section102.
Law enforcement within the state should be and only is concerned with whether or not a person has committed a crime within that jurisdiction according to local law, and that is all that should be dealt with, while citizenship is unnecessary to ascertain as the person is within the commonwealth when law is applied.
Ice may be concerned with citizenship, but local law enforcement isn’t. ICE may be concerned with that, but their concern is not that of the local law enforcement and it, not local law enforcement should deal with that.
The state law, General laws: Part 1:Title XV: Section 102 states
“All persons within the commonwealth, regardless of sex, race, color, creed or national origin, shall have, except as is otherwise provided or permitted by law, the same rights enjoyed by white male citizens, to make and enforce contracts, to inherit, purchase, to lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.”
I am of the opinion that even as groups are fighting to make certain locations Sanctuary Cities or Safe Communities, this law has already established that this is already a Sanctuary State, and any individual or group, who resides in the state of Massachusetts should file law suits whenever they are treated in any way that violates this existing law.
Anyone who wants to look into this would make me very happy, but a quick “I think……” or “it’s my opinion upon first reading this…….” without taking the time to actually research won’t.