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States Begin Restricting Hotel Rates For Special Events

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

          According to the June 26, 2003 newsletter of the Greater Louisville Motel and Hotel Association, some states, including Alabama and Georgia, are now working on legislation to limit the amount that hotels can increase their rates for special events. The association is warning its members to stay alert and hopes Kentucky legislators have a greater appreciation for the law of supply and demand than the legislators of those other states.

          Now that the Supreme Court has extended the “right of privacy” that it discovered in the “emanations and penumbras” of the Constitution to kinky sexual acts between consenting adults, isn’t it time to further expand that “right of privacy” to business transactions between consenting adults?  For example, shouldn’t consenting adults be free to agree on the price for the hotel room in which their protected, private sexual acts may occur?  Why should the price of the hotel room be subject to government intervention any more than the private acts that may take place within that room?  After all, wouldn’t preventing a person from negotiating freely to rent a room effectively prevent him from engaging freely in those protected activities in that room!

          A person who wants to engage in protected private activities in a hotel room in Louisville during Derby week certainly should expect to pay much more than he would pay at any other time of year, since he would be competing against so many other people for that hotel room at that particular time.  Surely, the people who most desperately want to engage in protected activities in those rooms should be free to express that desire by bidding up the price for the rooms! 

          In reality, the Supreme Court would not even have to cook up the “right to privacy”, which is not actually in the Constitution, in order to decide that states cannot regulate the amount consenting adults can charge one another for goods or services.  It could instead rely on a right that is actually in the Constitution.  The 5^th Amendment states that private property is not to be taken for public use without just compensation.  If a state were to limit the amount a hotel could charge for its rooms, wouldn’t that be a taking without just compensation? 

Alas, the Supreme Court is not very interested in the rights that are actually written in the Constitution.  It is much more interested in these cooked-up “rights”.  So, if I were in the hotel business and wanted to defend myself against state regulation of my rates, I might be inclined to argue on 5^th Amendment grounds, on the basis of language that is actually in the Constitution to protect private property, but my chances for success no doubt would be much greater if I converted the issue into one of privacy.  And, if the right of privacy can be used to allow consenting adults to negotiate freely for the price of hotel rooms, then maybe that right of privacy could be extended to provide additional freedom as well.  Maybe, eventually, we might acquire the right to buy and sell automobiles freely without regulation (since their back seats could be used for private protected activities), the right to buy and sell mattresses without those “do not remove” tags, the right to buy toilets that use more than 2 gallons per flush, etc.  The possibilities are endless! 

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