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Comment by jasonhansel | Hacker News Reader

I'm rather surprised that you can write a law calling out one particular company by name and applying solely to that one company, as the Montana bill does. How common is this?

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Practically unheard of. It's usually tiptoed around by wording laws in such a way that they only apply to one company. Compare, for example, the recent Arkansas bill[1] banning some social media services, which effectively exempts TikTok by making an exception for any "social media company that allows a user to generate short video clips of dancing, voice overs, or other acts of entertainment".

For that matter, it's unclear if it's even constitutional. Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution flatly prohibits bills of attainder (laws which declare a specific person guilty of a crime and/or subject them to punishments). It's undecided whether this clause extends to corporations or only to natural persons, but the possibility is enough.

[1]: https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/FTPDocument?path=%2FBil...

Yeah, I understand passing a law that is intentionally designed to apply to only one company. But it's odd for a law to just name the company.

Particularly when the entire intent of the law is to declare the company guilty of a variety of offenses and force them to cease operations. It feels like a massive overstep into the responsibilities of the judicial branch -- and one which isn't even based on any specific laws or legal principles.

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