Communities to Save Enterprise Zones has asked Reed Smith to articulate the legal case against Governor Brown's proposal to repeal the benefits associated with California's Enterprise Zone Program, including elimination of Enterprise Zone Benefits already earned and vested. In the pages that follow, we explain why the proposed repeal is more than just poor public policy. (That much is intuitive: Government should not target a specific group by deliberately inducing them to engage in specific, substantial action and then - after convincing them to perform those actions - take away the vested rights members of that group earned in exchange.) The purpose of this memorandum is to explain the reasons why this particular poor public policy is also illegal state action, and thus just as impermissible as it is imprudent.
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