Louisiana Garage Sales Can No Longer Take Cash?

Have you bought something at a garage sale in the past few months? If you paid cash and live in Louisiana you might have just broken the law. That's right a law passed in 2011 designed to curtail the illegal sale of stolen goods might just make your Grandmother guilty of a crime.

The law, House Bill 195 of the 2011 Regular Session (Act 389) makes cash transactions for anyone who "buys, sells, trades or otherwise acquires or disposes of junk or used or secondhand property (from entering) into any cash transactions in payment for the purchase of (such items)."

I can see the intent of the law but I don't think our hired hands in Baton Rouge got this one exactly right. Can you imagine telling someone who just bought your Dad's old exercise bike and the blender without a lid that they are going to have to pay with a debit or credit card? I don't see that happening anymore than I see the legislators in Baton Rouge removing their heads from an orifice where sunshine rarely occurs. Needless to say the last word has not been written on this subject and this law will eventually fall into the long list of stupid laws on the books in our great state.