The U.S. Department of Justice has until tomorrow to decide if it will appeal a federal court decision that could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Inexplicably, DOJ is considering the possibility of rolling over to the demands of plaintiffs. It has not yet decided if it will appeal the decision, according to Charles Miller, a DOJ spokesman.

It has not yet decided? Shouldn’t this be a no-brainer? That’s right, folks. Republicans, who were recently booted from office due in part to their spendthrift ways, apparently did not get the message. They are still contemplating the easy way out, even when it could cost you, the taxpayer, hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, what is all the fuss about? It’s simple. In 2001, the American Council of the Blind filed a lawsuit alleging that U.S. currency discriminates against the blind because a blind person can’t tell, by touching a paper bill, whether it is a $1, $10, $20, or some other denomination. In other countries (as with U.S. coins), these bills come in different sizes, at least in part to accommodate the visually impaired.

Late last month, citing international precedent, U.S. District Judge James Robertson, a Clinton appointee, ruled in favor of the blind advocacy group. He determined that U.S. paper money, in its current form, violates the federal Rehabilitation Act. He ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to redesign paper money to cure this alleged discrimination. He gave the government 10 days to begin work on new currency options.

The judge took this unilateral action, even while noting that the Rehabilitation Act requires only those accommodations that are “‘reasonable.’” Actions are not reasonable, the judge stated, if they would entail “‘undue financial and administrative burdens.’” Despite initial estimates that the public cost of change would run in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the judge did not find that the “undue financial burden” test had been satisfied. Huh? Moreover, the judge dismissed evidence that the changes he has demanded could make money easier to counterfeit.

Perhaps most shockingly, the judge made his decision in the face of a potentially easier solution: Note-tellers, a small pocket-sized device that helps visually impaired individuals to determine the denomination of a bill. Why not focus on improving this technology so that these devices can be obtained cheaply and easily by those who need them? Wouldn’t such a decision be more “reasonable” than redesigning the nation’s entire paper money system?

Consider the hundreds of millions of dollars that private companies will lose if the Bush administration insists upon recklessly refusing to appeal the decision of one, lone, activist judge. Tom McMahon, senior vice president of the National Automatic Merchandising Association, estimates that reworking the nation’s 7 million vending machines will cost his industry at least $560 million. Companies with slot machines and banks with ATM machines will face similarly onerous and unnecessary costs—to say nothing of cash drawers and wallets that would need to be adapted to handle new bill sizes.

Columnist Jeffrey Page recently interviewed a blind man in New Jersey. He felt certain that the man he was interviewing, John De Witt, would be thrilled with the judge’s opinion. De Witt, however, was not impressed. It turns out that De Witt has found fairly easy, inexpensive methods of being blind and handling cash simultaneously.

"De Witt folds $1’s from left to right and keeps them in his left pocket. He folds $5’s the same way but places them in his right pocket along with his $10’s, which he folds like a $5 bill and then folds again into fourths. Twenties he folds once vertically, right down Jackson’s face, and then once horizontally."

"Easy. No government involvement. And it doesn’t cost a dime. Nice."

"But how does he know which is a $5 bill and which is a $1 bill when he’s dealing with strangers? Say he spends $7 at a store, pays with a $20 bill and receives four bills in change. “I just ask the cashier out loud, ‘Which one is the $10 bill?’ and invariably I get an honest answer,” De Witt says. If he has some doubt, he’ll turn to the next person on a cashier line and ask."

Sometimes, De Witt copes by using a debit card, rather than cash. In all his years of blindness, De Witt has been ripped off only once.

Imagine that. A little individual ingenuity can solve this problem, as with most matters in which the government inappropriately inserts itself.

And in the midst of all this craziness, the nation’s largest blind advocacy group, the National Federation of the Blind, maintains a firm stance against the change to paper money. Indeed, John Paré, director of public relations for the group, blasted the effort. “The blind need jobs and real opportunities to earn money, not feel-good gimmicks that misinform the public about our capabilities,” he said. “[W]e’re against redesigning solely for blind people because that suggests blind people are being discriminated against, and that’s not the case.”

If only the Bush administration would be as reasonable. It does not need to facilitate expensive government solutions to a special interest group that does not want help.

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