[CHALLENGE] (Already resolved) Repeal "Clean Prostitute Act"

[Bananaistan]

For admin purposes, per the public challenge thread, GenSec voted illegal 3-2 (posts leading up to this one) - SL, BA and GH illegal, Sep and I legal. I suspect that SL's post is a draft opinion.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

...I suspect that SL's post is a draft opinion.

Will do. Bits of further argument integrated also.

We are asked to determine whether an at-vote repeal of GAR #179 (Clean Prostitute Act or "CPA") commits an Honest Mistake.

Specifically, the repeal bears a clause accusing the target, in part, of "...placing all responsibility for STI testing and regulation on the sex workers themselves..." This is the argument at issue here.

The target resolution mandates simply that "prostitutes... be regularly screened" and, if testing positive, "abstain from their work." It does not mandate a payment method or funding source. We liken it to GAR #97 in this respect: the resolution does not care how nations fund this mandate, only that the requirements be fulfilled. The only difference in #97 is its explicit listing of possible funding options. Regardless, if one nation chooses to publicly fund all healthcare, including on-demand STI testing, that is a national choice, just as requiring payments from all who can afford them would be. In neither case has the World Assembly foisted funding responsibility on any particular entity. It is then a misrepresentation of the target to claim that it "places all responsibility" for funding on the people subjected to it. While that may be the practical result in most places, it is not so by WA mandate but because national governments make that choice. The WA could in fact pass a resolution requiring that member states, or the General Fund, shoulder the costs of STI testing of sex workers in member states, without contradicting CPA. That doesn't square with an interpretation that the WA has shoved those costs onto the workers, rather than national governments choosing to do so.

They are able to make that choice due to the resolution's silence as to the agent of the STI screenings. Silence on a topic cannot by itself confer responsibility; silence plus action by member states may do so, but the resolution does not mandate action by member states (being, after all, silent); and it is still the member states who have made that choice. But what if the choice were mandated in a less obvious fashion? Could the CPA's wording be a stealthy mandate on sex workers?

The clause in the target is written in the passive voice. The repeal asserts that CPA "places all responsibility" (emphasis added) on the subject of the statement simply by virtue of its silence as to the agent. All prostitutes must be tested. Is this grammar-based legalism constant across other areas of the law? An environmental resolution might state "All trees in designated areas must be protected from logging." If we accept the repeal's claim, we are committed to the argument that trees, themselves, are responsible for protecting themselves from timber companies. This is absurd, and we therefore find the statement to be an Honest Mistake.

[Bears Armed]

I sign.

[Grays Harbor]

Signed

[Separatist Peoples]

What the hell, signed.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Custodial note. Op was posted at viewtopic.php?f=9&t=512813&p=39256048#p39256048.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

Custodial note. Op was posted at viewtopic.php?f=9&t=512813&p=39256048#p39256048.

Obliged.