Remember these little gizmos? For several years, cars had stereos that didn’t come with an external audio jack. Anyone with a cassette deck who wanted to play their MP3 tunes needed one of these adapters.
The cassette adapter severed a purpose at a time, but faded away as cars were designed to accommodate mp3 players.
Rewind to 1951. The Cold War was still in its infancy. U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s star was on the rise. And the Soviet Red Scare was in full effect, which lead to the Washington State Legislature enacting the Subversive Activities Act.
The act prohibits “subversive activities” and membership in subversive organizations. It also requires state employees to take loyalty oaths by stating they are not members of the Communist Party or another subversive organization. State employees refusing to take the oath can be fired.
Believe it or not, the Subversive Activities Act is still on the books today. Look it up. RCW 9.81.
From RCW 9.81.070
Every such person, board, commission, council, department, court, or other agency shall require every employee or applicant for employment to state under oath whether or not he or she is a member of the Communist party or other subversive organization, and refusal to answer on any grounds shall be cause for immediate termination of such employee’s employment or for refusal to accept his or her application for employment.
The Subversive Activities Act is a blatant violation of the Bill of Rights and was tossed out by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964. Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon has introduced bills to get it off the books, but his idea has failed to get bipartisan support in the Legislature.
If you had one of those cassette adapters that you no longer needed, would you keep it around? Maybe it’s time to clean house.
We hear arguments all the time that the Legislature should be getting rid of old laws before enacting new ones.
RCW 9.81 would be a good start.