Two years of smokefree air. Happy birthday, smoking ban.

Or did you mean, we don’t recognize the “yeah, that may be what the words of the statute say, but it’s not what they meant” argument? If so, yeah, you still need that ambiguity finding first.

My experience is that any statute can easily be found to be ambiguous by a motivated judge. Many are poorly written, and are, in fact, ambiguous, while others are merely inconsistent with the judge’s philosophies. Similarly, any statute can be mis-read or mis-interpreted by a motivated, dumb, or misled judge, and then, legislative intent can get you back home when nothing else will.

Subd. 1a. Indoor area. “Indoor area” means all space between a floor and a ceiling that is bounded on two or more sides by walls…

Subd. 2. Public place. “Public place” means any enclosed, indoor area used by the general public…

And smoking is prohibited in the following places:

Smoking shall not be permitted in and no person shall smoke in a public place…in a place of employment…

So if smoking is only banned in places defined as indoor places and indoor places are specifically defined as having a ceiling and at least two walls, than a sidewalk area (think The Local or Sally’s near the U) is not indoors and smoking is not banned. But then I’m not an attorney and they put in the patio language, so there must be more to it. Any attorney’s on MNSpeak care to take a look? Or, kwatt, surely your caucus has attorneys you could ask.