Disclaimer
Last updated .
This is not legal advice
Gatekeep is a compliance tool, not a law firm. Using it creates no lawyer-client relationship, and nothing here is advice about your specific situation. Whether a particular product you sell is caught by a particular rule can turn on details this library does not know: how the item is formulated, packaged, described and sold, and who you are selling it to.
A rule is not the law
Each rule compresses what a cited source says into roughly a paragraph, and that compression loses detail by design. Where a rule and its source disagree, the source governs. The library is not published, so you cannot check a rule against its source yourself: a blocked or allowed checkout is Gatekeep's reading of the law, not a ruling on it. If a decision matters, take advice on the underlying statute rather than relying on what the app did.
Rules change, and rules go stale
Every rule records the date it was last checked, and the build refuses to run if any rule goes more than a year without a review. Even so, between a review and the moment an order is placed, a legislature may have amended or repealed the provision, a court may have struck it down, or an agency may have reinterpreted it. Several rules in this library exist precisely because a widely repeated ban had in fact been repealed.
Confidence is stated, not implied
Rules marked medium confidence rest on text that leaves room for interpretation, or on the absence of a prohibition rather than an express permission. A negative cannot be proved from one search. Where a rule says to check with the state authority before shipping, that instruction is doing real work.
Local rules are mostly out of scope
The library records state and federal rules, plus a county or city ordinance where it is stricter than its state. It does not attempt to cover every municipality. Single-cigar rules, many flavour restrictions and a great deal of fireworks regulation are local, and a statewide answer may not hold for your town.
Enforceability versus the words in the code
Some statutes remain in the code after a court has held them unenforceable. Where that is so, Gatekeep applies the practical position for a merchant rather than enforcing a prohibition that no longer binds. Reasonable lawyers can differ about such cases, and a prosecutor is not obliged to share our reading.
What to do with all this
Treat Gatekeep as a backstop that keeps obvious mistakes out of your checkout, not as a ruling on what you may lawfully sell. Gatekeep blocking an order is not proof that the order was unlawful, and allowing one is not proof that it was lawful. Before you act on anything consequential, take advice from a qualified lawyer in the jurisdiction concerned.