Because Florida was hastily attached to America to be the butt of her jokes, this latest piece of ridiculousness should come as no surprise: Florida might have accidentally banned all computers and smartphones. How? It all stems from a poorly worded bill that banned internet cafes and slot machines.
The purpose of the ban was to kill internet cafes that allowed customers to gamble online by playing games like bingo and other slots-type games. A thousand of those internet cafes shut down in Florida after the bill went into effect in April, but it looks like Florida may have overlooked a few details in offing internet cafes.
Now an owner of one of those internet cafes that got shut down, Consuelo Zapata, is fighting back and has discovered that in the process of shutting down internet cafes, Florida might have just banned all computers and smartphones altogether.
The key is the wording of what was banned. The Huffington Post reports:
The ban defines illegal slot machines as any “system or network of devices” that may be used in a game of chance.
As you can see, any system or network of devices is a pretty broad definition which means it can be applied to “any number of devices,” according to Miami law firm Kluger, Kaplan, Silverman, Katzen & Levine. Zapata is now suing the state in hopes that the court calls the internet cafe ban unconstitutional. I’m secretly hoping the courts decide that banning all computers and smartphones is the lawful thing to do in Florida just to see what will happen. [Miami Herald via Huffington Post]