by Bob Walsh
Gabrielle Cateris is the President of the Screen Actors Guild. Last year she lobbies, strongly and successfully, for the passage of AB1687. It was signed into law by Jerry Brown.
Ms. Cateris played on Beverly Hills 90210. She was at the time 29. Her character was 17. She is absolutely convinced (quite possibly correctly) that she would NOT have got the part had they been aware of her true age. Now, with the internet and IMDB (Internet Movie data Base) it is not possible, or at least was not possible, to conceal little details like that. This new law made it illegal for these commercial web sites, which are often used in casting, to show a DOB. All, of course, in the interest of preventing age discrimination.
The law is now being challenged in federal court, asserting that it is an illegal and unconstitutional infringement on freedom of speech.
The formerly great state of California has a spotty history in this area. Some while back real free speech advocates challenged a rule of the State Assembly which forbade the use of television broadcast information from the floor for political or commercial purposes. These broadcasts are entirely funded by taxpayer money. The feds ruled that even "grandstanding" which was (allegedly) the reason this rule existed was in fact free speech and that the State Assembly could not prohibit these uses of its broadcasts.
In a further note, the state legislature is already considering two bills that require schools present material to enable their students to evaluate on-line news stories in order to determine which of them are "trustworthy" and which of them are not. Regular readers will remember that in California the Democrat-Socialists have a super-majority in both houses and all constitutional officers are also Democrat-Socialists.
(I am confident any such course material would be really brief. If it is from Fox News or any conservative source it is "fake news" and if it is from NPR, CNN or any mainstream media it is trustworthy.)
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