|
|
Community Rights
Counsel |
 |
|
Newsroom
Guest Blogger (this piece was originally posted on the American Constitution
Society Blog, Occasionally, the Supreme Court issues an opinion that is so surprising and definitive that it warrants rethinking an entire area of Supreme Court jurisprudence. The Court’s ruling this week in Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC is just such a decision. In Bates, the Court provides a roadmap for federalism as a neutral principle, rather than an ideology. In Bates, the Supreme Court cleared the way for 29 Texas peanut farmers to sue Dow, claiming that a pesticide called “Strongarm” damaged their crops. The farmers assert that Dow knew or should have known that the pesticide would stunt peanut growth in certain soils, such as those in west Texas where the farmers tried to grow their crops. The Court rejected Dow’s claim that suits based on state laws should be prohibited when a manufacturer complies with federal labeling requirements. The New York Times’ Linda Greenhouse called Bates “one of the Court’s most significant rulings on the pre-emptive effect of federal statutes.” The ruling shows that the Court’s right and left flanks—which seem to agree on the need for dramatic reforms to the Court’s preemption case law—may have convinced the Court’s center that changes are necessary. In two cases over the past six years, a slightly shifting coalition of four dissenting justices—anchored by the odd threesome of Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Thomas—have called for the Court to jettison its free-ranging inquiry into whether to find “implied” preemption of state law in a federal statute because state law represents an “obstacle” to federal objectives. As Justice Thomas writes in a separate opinion in Bates, joined by Justice Scalia, the ruling “comports with this Court’s increasing reluctance to expand federal statutes beyond their terms through doctrines of implied preemption.” But the impact of Bates could extend far beyond the narrow confines of preemption law. Over the past 15 years, the Supreme Court’s five most conservative justices have attempted to define what the Court has called “Our Federalism” in rulings that have redrawn the boundaries between state and federal power. These rulings have both terrified and infuriated liberals. Terrified because the rulings seemed to threaten bedrock federal protections ranging from the Americans with Disabilities Act, to the Endangered Species Act, even to portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Infuriated because the Court seemed to capriciously abandon its pro-state federalism principles when confronted with a case in which a state or local policy advanced a progressive cause. “Our Federalism” was looking suspiciously like a purely anti-regulatory agenda. Bates goes a long way towards dispelling that suspicion. Indeed, the case suggests that the Court is creating a new federalism jurisprudence, one that takes a more generous view of both federal and state power. In Tennessee v. Lane (2004) and Nevada v. Hibbs (2003), the Court upheld important portions of the ADA and the Family and Medical Leave Act, dismissing the claim that Congress lacks the ability to pass these laws under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment. This term, the Court is widely expected to hold, in Ashcroft v. Raich, that the federal government has the authority under the Commerce Clause to regulate small quantities of medical marijuana. This would arguably be the most sweeping exercise of federal power ever blessed by the Court. Bates, in turn, shows that the Court is willing to shoulder what Justice Brandeis called the Court’s “grave responsibility” to protect states as democracy’s “laboratory.” Every Justice in Bates rejected the claim of Dow and the Bush Administration that federal pesticide law broadly insulated the chemical giant from liability under state law. In doing so, the Court reversed the nearly unanimous conclusion of lower courts, and it opened the way for innumerable suits by farmers and others against pesticide giants like Dow. Few were predicting a victory by the farmers in Bates, and no one foresaw that the federal government’s position would be unanimously rejected. The implications of the shift in preemption law and the broader recasting of federalism should be clear to anyone who has witnessed the states emerge in recent years as the leading engine of progress in health care, the environment, and corporate reform—and who has seen the supposedly pro-federalism Court all too often strike down progressive state statutes. The Court seems in Bates and other recent cases to be moving away from a polarizing, ideologically-driven form of federalism to a more neutral version that can unite the Court and draw support across the political spectrum. If this proves true, Bates will be more than a big victory for Texas peanut farmers, it will be a milestone in American law. Douglas T. Kendall is Executive Director of Community Rights Counsel, a public interest law firm in Washington D.C. Jennifer Bradley is Federalism Project Director at Community Rights Counsel.
|
|
