The state senate has passed a bill giving municipalities, the UW System, and individual venues the authority to establish resale zones for tickets. Under the proposed bill, reselling tickets outside of the resale zone is punishable by a $500 fine.
Just local-state division of power aside (should the state legislature be essentially making zoning ordinances?), someone needs to be bold enough to value the free market over petty individual annoyances.
I would argue that “scalpers,” as the bill’s proponents want to portray all people who are interested in reselling a ticket, do not pose an imminent threat to anyone. “Scalpers” are simply trying to engage in the sale of a ticket. If you picture a sale as a form of contract in which the underlying agreement is that the “scalper” will give their client a ticket in exchange for money, the limitation of a “scalper’s” ability to sell tickets, which doesn’t violate ordered liberty, is arbitrary, and thus, opposed to the freedom of contract as derived from calls for liberty in the due process clause of the 14th amendment.
Senator Glenn Grothman, principle among opponents of the bill, is right that casual fans with an extra ticket to sell are being unjustly targeted by this proposed bill, but he understates the pure injustice of this bill at its core.
Trivial as it may seem, limiting the right of “scalpers” to freely sell tickets is innately unconstitutional and illustrates how far government has really gone in abridging individual freedoms.
