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COURTS✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Chinese carmaker sues US Defense Department over lobbying rule
Filed 2h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk
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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Harrison Keely · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Two Pasadena-based U.S. subsidiaries of China's BYD Group sued the Defense Department, arguing a law barring contractors from using lobbyists who also represent designated 'Chinese military companies' violates their First Amendment rights.
BYD says its lobbyists dropped the company after the Pentagon's June designation, which cited its inclusion in a Chinese green-vehicle registry that also lists Volkswagen, Mercedes, Toyota, Tesla and Honda. The company operates a Lancaster, California bus plant employing over 1,000 workers and wants the court to strike the provision facially and as applied.
The Pentagon declined comment, citing pending litigation, leaving the registry-as-military-evidence question for the judge.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
If sharing a shelf with Toyota and Tesla on some tax registry makes you a military contractor, half the car lots in America ought to be worried. The Pentagon gets to make these calls behind closed doors and then shrug when someone asks it to show its work in open court. A judge is about to find out whether national security here means something real, or just means somebody in Washington didn't like the paperwork.
