It was a bad idea to begin with, and now a U.S. court of appeals has unanimously ruled Indiana’s 25-foot police buffer law “unconstitutionally vague.” The decision should have ended the matter, but lawmakers’ persistence suggests they may try again.

Last week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s injunction blocking the law, finding it “susceptible to arbitrary enforcement” and lacking clear standards for when police can order someone to keep their distance.

“The Fourteenth Amendment will not tolerate a law subjecting pedestrians to arrest merely because a police officer had a bad breakfast — no matter how bitter the coffee or how soggy the scrambled eggs,” Judge Doris Pryor wrote in the opinion.

It was more than judicial wit. It was a pointed rebuke of a statute

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