Shailah: I purchased a copy of the US Constitution at a gift shop, but now I want to throw it away because my Gender Studies professor told me that the founding fathers were all evil racists. Can I throw it away in the regular trash, or does it require geniza?
Teshuvah: Firstly, you should not have purchased it to begin with because your professor is right. However, it does have some level of kedushah. As the famous story goes, a ger came to Avi Weiss and asked him to teach the entire Torah standing on one foot, Rabbi Weiss replied “dina malchusa Torah he! The rest is commentary.” The ger didn’t understand, but we converted him anyway.
The point is, following dina malchusa is at least as important as the Torah itself, whether that country be the US, North Korea, or even occupied Palestine. Properly filing taxes is more important than keeping kosher, which is why we now offer our “yosher” hashgacha based on business practices rather than outdated dietary rituals. We can be m’dayek from all this that the laws of any given country are straight from Hashem.