| sorry for the poor english, i have a habbit of not editing what i write and it sometimes lead to unintelligible jibberish. Here is the edited version of the above: I came to this blog by accident and cant help but be intrigued by this topic. So here is my 2 cents. From a legal perspective, the US adheres to Common Law, which I presume is the very reason why such refusal of service is legal and not discriminatory, since the provision of service, or sales at common law is based on the notion of 'contracts'. One of the principles of contract is that there must be an 'offer' and 'acceptance' for a subject matter, in this case being service and food in a resturant. Secondly, the parties of a contract must have free and indepedent will regarding what is it they are contracting (acts of compulsion and duress will null the contract), the common law will not interfere so long as the contractual subject (here, the provision of service and legal goods) is not contradictory to any legislation. To cut the long story short, any business who advertises and invites customers are not regarded as to be the offeror (because once you make an offer, you cannot reject it when a person walks in to accept your offer - in this case, you must serve the person), instead, for policy reasons their actions are regarded as an 'invitation to treat'. Hence, any person who walks into the store and asks for service is actually offering to purchase the service or goods from the shop-owner. Here, the owener can either accept the offer (to which other conditions must be met which i will no discuss here) or reject the offer. Since the parties must enter a contract at their own free will, the owener is under no compulsion to accept and can reject any offer for any reason he thinks fit (legally speaking). Consequently, shop owners holds the right pursuant to their operating ownership of the premises to eject the person to whom service has been refused to leave under the principle of 'tresspass' in 'torts'. The sign you're speaking of merely reflects that legal principle. I'm a law student in Australia, I hope that clears up your question, even though its abit late. |
"The Right to Refuse Service to Anyone"